Any opinions on the photo that just can't find its way in the world?

[JeffR]

This is the one I posted recently in two versions. There were a lot of very sound thoughts on which people preferred and why, which I tried to incorporate into a third variation below. Is it better? Worse?

Uncropped original:



First crop:



Second attempt:

[mth44sc]

1. Originally I was a fan of the original

but I'm liking #3 more...

[JeffR]

3. Starting to think I saw a good photograph here

and just didn't get it, but I appreciate the vote of confidence for #3. I thought it was better, but it doesn't set my socks on fire.

[Tindalos]

2. Third one.

The tunnel gives the picture a sense of looking through time. I think some of the history of the building is lost if too much is cut out.

[JeffR]

4. Thanks. I based that crop mostly on your comments in the other thread.

This is the building as I was walking toward it that day:

[Mira]

5. The third is my favorite off the bat and on close reflection. I would like to see

a bit more of the "tunnel" on the right only.

[dbmk]

6. I am going to throw a wrench in the works

..and say I like First crop better than Second attempt. :)

There is something about the placement of the arch opening and our guys leaving that works better in First Crop for me. Seems unbalanced in Second attempt. To me. :)

[TahitiNut]

7. The second crop (3rd photo) is almost exactly how I'd have suggested.

It's the best of the three, imho. I would have cropped it slightly LESS at the top only, wanting the ground/floor to settle a bit lower in the frame. For the lateral balance, I'd want the hanging lantern and the peak of the arch to be centered, just as you have. Nice shot.

[tekisui]

8. Third times a charm.

You got it right on that on, IMO. I preferred the depth of the first one, but the edges were unnecessarily distracting with the gates. Number 3 gives the depth and lends strength to the frame of the arch.

Well done. Great shot.

[Deja Q]

9. Still like the original - adds length to the tunnel and adds to the perception of the depressed guy

The crops, while #3 is better, just aren't the same.

IMHO

[sandnsea]

10. The original makes you want to get a closer look

so you keep trying to adjust the picture to get that closer look (to find out what's going on with that guy) - but isn't art supposed to stir emotions and isn't that what the first one does? It's done it's job. It's got us all intrigued. It's a great photo. Leave it alone.

[Tindalos]

11. I agree with you.

I'm liking the original more and more.

[Mira]

12. Funny, and I'm sure you have moved on by now, yet this photo haunts me.

The tight crop at this point is a physical pain to see, because it leaves me wanting. So as before that's not my choice.

The second crop, where I wanted a little more depth (dark) on the right is still preferred.
My new decision though leans towards leaving as much of the tunnel sides as you are comfortable with and add a little more information about the ceiling..in essence I'm saying don't disturb the original too much.

The most critical thing I have picked up from you photo folks since I have been allowed in your midst is about cropping.
I probably won't ever get into photography as an art form the way many of you can and do, though I have taken pictures all my long life.

I have a background of watching my Dad take b/w photos in the days of German reconstruction, and he had my ear when he talked about framing out a shot looking down into his Leica.

To me hanging out here is just like having come home.

[bridgit]

13. In such instances it is my thought; that to turn the format on end becomes a form of cropping...

The open end of a tunnel is able to be recognized as an (the thee, just 'an') equivalent of setting a tree or telephone pole right up the middle of your shot. Lain horizontally, the shot can be suggestive of the pupil of an eye: perhaps even a stationary, unblinking thing. Vertically, however, and not to suggest that you're unable to do so horizontally; but you're able to 'weight' the shot into 3rds and clearly discernibly so. It deals with what Desmond Morris refers to as the patterning/ordering of the human mind. Example...

Minimalist landscape painters are able to suggest a horizon with not much more than one line-strike traversing the bottom 3rd of a field. These are all sort of 'automatic things', but the mind, if you will: *gestalt's it*, ordering it as a horizon line cause this is where we live...on the ground. Though by going vertical and opening up more of the eye to the top and to the bottom, it is possible to introduce skewed perspectives requiring a ladder to climb up on and reset i.e. your goal posts are no longer perpendicular their tips take off into the corners I'm sure you know what I mean ;)

I try to do as much cropping in the lens as possible so that concerns for the pic here being made better are able to be threaded back into the treatment of the field in which it existed at the snap. I'm a kook for architecture & perspective; in pic 2, we see the remains of that consideration in the ceiling's arch; as a for instance, pic 3 has nearly cropped it out. Though by having gone vertical more of those kinds of considerations would have survived into the present day, however...

Being a pic queued upon a person *in* such a setting I am drawn to a primordial image of Father Merrin, where were the person in your pic to be carrying a black handbag we'd be asking a whole separate set of Q's perhaps even such as, "What's in the bag?"

For these sorts of reason, and the ways in which as much of the original pic has been presevred...I like pic #2