Originally posted by Erictator Thanks WPRESTO ! I like a strong opinion, and I can see why it would grab you. So much color and detail the K-1 grabs with the DFA100WR... and the natural lighting just made it pop.
The $64K question is, do you like it as much when uncropped seen above? Eric
It goes like this:
1) advice I received way back in the 1950's when I started photography, and which I followed both framing chromes and cropping in the darkroom doing B&W = fill the frame with your subject
2) generally I am, therefore, a ruthless cropper.
3) what is the "story" in your image?
A. a setting or landscape or tableau in which the anole is an accent or point of interest
OR
B. a picture of an interesting, colorful lizard
If A, do not crop, If B then crop
4) For me it would be a no brainer because if there's an animal in an image I take, 99.9% of the time that's what I wanted to photograph, not the setting with the animal as an incidental element.
5) BUT ALSO I would consider whether there was sufficient IQ to crop. If detail in the animal doesn't withstand a crop, better to leave the image as a setting with the animal just a POI or make the story, "an animal in its habitat," even if that's not what I originally wanted (as I've commented before, if an image turns our blurry or badly framed, make it worse with a filter and call it ART)
There's no correct answer. It depends on what you intended or want as the "story" of the image. But I find the cropped image far more interesting and pleasing.