Photo Editing: Redesigning

I’ve been reviewing some of my photos and thinking, “this should be a pretty good image, but it isn’t.  What’s wrong with it?”  Then I reverted to my painting and composition background and realized, “They are too busy.  If I’d painted this it wouldn’t be so cluttered.”  So I set forth and changed the landscape :).  Here are two examples.

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The black hole on the lower left was out of sync with the rest of the image, so I cloned it in.  Now there is better balance in the image.

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For the image to be pleasing the eye has to be able to flow easily through the scene and not be blocked or fixated on any one area that is not intended to be the focus.  For me, even my revised edition of this one is still choppy in the foreground but I tried to take it further and didn’t like the result.  Cropping is sometimes another option to rid the image of unwanted clutter but it can also change the balance of the image.  I decided not to crop off the bottom of this photo for that reason.

Another solution for this image is shown in my header.  A drastic crop and a bit of cloning along the bottom edge.  However I was reluctant to do this because part of what I loved most about my experience on the Isle of Skye where these photos were taken was the open and big sky. The header image has totally eliminated the sky but does allow for added attention to the mountains