Doe

I know the doe is in the center, but I think the tree helps to shift

the balance the the right. It could be cropped tighter, but then you

would lose a lot of the leaves. What would you do? Thanks for your

input!

Hi Skip, first of all the doe makes a better subject than the leaves! :) Click here to see how I've cropped the doe image. (I enlarged the image to 200%.) Don't worry about losing all the leaves. You still get all that great color in the background. Include as much of the tree as you can while keeping the doe slightly to the right of center to maintain a sense of movement. For the future I would also suggest trying to get more of a 3/4 view. Here it's almost a side profile, which flattens the image a bit. Additionally, I would suggest a cooling filter for this situation (80A for example) to reduce some of the redness without diminishing the vibrant foliage. Nice shot!

I think the image is pleasing as it is. I only ever crop if there's a lack of anything interesting in the rest of the frame (like blank sky), or the shape of the frame does not fit well with the subject. In this case there are those wonderful leaves, so I'd leave it full frame. Good shot!

I think the doe is too small in the frame, and dead center. I cropped in order to strengthen the composition and make the doe a more prominent subject, to make her "own" the image.