Bad cropping examples

When you move away from taking just snapshops to actually trying to produce quality photographs that you'd be proud to frame, you're moving into the realms of artists. And just any art, tastes are all subjective. What may work for you in a photo might not for others. Or vice versa.

These are a few old photographs I took awhile ago. I decided to be heavy-handed in cropping them, to give a few example of what's too much.

Original. The composition isn't bad. It's not quite divided up in thirds, but that couldn't be helped, considering the enormity of the subject in the photo. In this photo, the ground accounts for one third, and ideally the monument would the other third and the "empty space" - sky, in this case, would be the last third. But architects did not take photography into consideration when designing this monument.

Cropped. Now, it's more evenly divided into thirds. But cropping it didn't improve the picture, although it did help emphasize just how talllll this monument is. I prefer the original over this.

Original. Same subject, but a bit further away.
This is another example of too-severe cropping, which resulted in loss of interest in the photo. If I cropped it so there were still a bit of the trees along the sides, that would be more interesting - the trees also serve to help guide your eyes toward the center, where I want the focus to be.

Another monument...It's a not bad-shot, but because this photo is nearly monochromatic - sometimes a good thing, sometimes not - I found that my eyes kept skipping all over the place, even despite knowing it's empty space.
Cropped it severely. The monument now dominates the space, which is fitting because, well, it's a damn big monument. But sometimes having a bit empty space to serve as a sort of neutral buffer for the eyes is good. I think a cropping job that's a smidge less severe than this (below) would be better.

What do ya'all think? Agree? Disagree? Speak up!

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Goals for this fall...

I said last week I was thinking of starting an e-business. I've been reading some articles and columns about starting your own business, and I'm confident that I can do it. The hard part is, for me, figuring out what kind of business I can do. And making sure it's interesting enough for me to continue for several months or years.

I get bored easily, especially if it loses its challenge after awhile. It'd suck if I put money into this, then blew it off because I wasn't interested enough to keep going.

Ideas for an e-biz:
1. Rare used-book sales middleman (woman?).

• Pros: Shouldn't be too difficult to set up, and wouldn't require me to have an inventory...in theory.
• Cons: I know very little about used books, don't have any contacts/networks in this area, which is important.

2. ????

I'm just full of ideas.

Also, I thought about trying to freelance again. I'll have to think hard on this, because the market for freelance writing is primarily nonfiction, which isn't in my area of interest. I'd much rather write fiction. Hmm. But extra money is good.

Another possibility I didn't consider last week is freelance editing. Now that I have some more experience under my belt, I could theorectically contract to do newsletters and other short-term jobs. This requires less time for research/interviews/whathaveyou that I'd have to do for writing nonfic, and it can pay fairly well. The hard part is breaking into the field. Most reputable companies don't advertise a need for contract editor.

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