Need some help here...

[traveller]

Hey all,

I've been having some difficulty with determining what the best crop of this photo is. So I'm looking for opinions, advice, a new set of eyes to help out. Tell me what you think is the best crop/composition of the photo or suggest another one. Thanks for the help!

Brian

Edit: Yes, looking over this It might be a bit nit picky but, I would find it also interesting to see what other people find compositionally interesting =)

See bigger versions here:
Help & Advice - a set on Flickr

[crystalb]

The 3rd crop works best for me, I think.

[Greg_Nuspel]

OK bad boy came out in me and I was wondering if she had a hypodermic

I'm looking at too may options to make up my mind on the crop I have to think about it.

[Mad Aussie]

I'm going for the 3rd crop also.

[Iguanasan]

Out of this set, #3 is the best. However, if I could crop it myself I would start with #3 and crop the window out as it draws the eye up and away from the subjects in the photo. I tried adding a note on your flickr images but it appears as if you have notes turned off and I noticed you have requested to be asked before editing so if you want to provide the full image and allow me to show you how I'd crop it I could show you what I mean.

[Marko]

I'm not sure here about the crop, for me I think it's shot 2. I don't see the window helping this shot in any significant way.

I find this shot too dark though so it's hard to talk about the composition as may of the details are obscured. The main woman looks like she's checking her time, but no one is interacting with her.
Hope that helps - Marko

[traveller]

Out of this set, #3 is the best. However, if I could crop it myself I would start with #3 and crop the window out as it draws the eye up and away from the subjects in the photo. I tried adding a note on your flickr images but it appears as if you have notes turned off and I noticed you have requested to be asked before editing so if you want to provide the full image and allow me to show you how I'd crop it I could show you what I mean.

Iguanasan, yes please feel free to edit my photo. The First one is the original one. As for the notes I'm not sure why you can't add notes, and I'm not sure how I would turn that off or on. The only thing I could think of was maybe you got logged out of flickr automatically or something?

[Iguanasan]

So, I'm not post processing expert but here's my take on it and what I did:



1) Positioned the heads of the ladies near the cross lines via the rule of thirds

2) Made sure I cropped out the bright window.

3) Used some retouching to remove the bright white spot in bottom right and tone down the bright table top.

4) I also brightened the image overall just a bit.

I don't have any tools for noise removal but you might be able to improve it a bit with a tool like that.

Now, as for the notes feature on Flickr follow these steps to check:

1) Under the "You" menu pick: "Your Account"
2) Click the "Privacy & Permissions" tab.
3) 14th item on the list: "Who will be able to see, comment on, add notes, or add people". Click the "edit" link to adjust this setting.