I’ve seen several bluebirds recently. She was sitting on the tree branch, then on my fence. They don’t eat from my feeders, just eat the bugs flying around.

It’s going to be 94 today, ugh, but the temperatures are dropping to the 80’s after the next couple of days, and 50’s to 60’s in the mornings. Yay! It just seems WRONG to be 94 in the middle of October! And no rain in sight. *sigh*

So I was working on getting the picture of the red dragonfly a couple of weeks ago, and just came across the photos. Here, my neighbor shouted from his rooftop to say hi.

🙂

I’m trying not to disturb the red dragonfly since I’d NEVER seen one before in real life, so I finally had to take a picture of my neighbor cleaning off his roof, so I could get back to photographing the red dragonfly. He’s so funny, and they’re just the best neighbors anybody could ask for.

I finished White Wolf Christmas and sent it to another beta reader for final reading and then I’ll have to make the final changes and turn it in. But I’m also having fun reading posts on photography, what to do and what not to do. Did you know that it’s better not to cut off people at the joints? Wrists, knees, elbows? Who would have ever thought?

So I was reading up on cropping, but it all comes down to the artistic eye. What someone might think is the coolest shot, someone else might think it needs to be cropped in a different way completely. It’s a good idea to keep your original photo and then if you decide later you think the photo should be cropped a different way, you can.  In the photo of the bluebird, I wanted to capture a little of the green trees. But rule of thirds say to keep the image you want to focus not in the center. Her head is actually is not in the center. In portrait photography, one photographer says to keep the eyes above center if you come in for a close shot.

Now, in cropping, all this is just art, truly. So like I said, what someone might like, someone else might like a different view.

In one photo they showed, they had a cafe table and stairs going into a building, but what fascinated me more was the continuation of the alley, the people in the distance. So for me, it was the whole scene, not the table. I was mainly focused on the people. Crop that out, and the table wasn’t half as interesting. But was just me. Sometimes I will crop a picture in a bunch of different ways, just to see which is more appealing. Usually if it’s something small, I like to crop it closer to show off the details of the object. If you can get in closer when you take the original shot, all the better. But sometimes birds or bees or butterflies or dragonflies don’t like you sneaking up close to them.

In the red dragonfly photo, I wanted to center on the dragonfly and the wrought iron he’s balancing on.  On the right side, there’s not much but the fence in the picture. On the left side, the sunflower. So I thought it was cooler with cropping a bit of the sunflower in, but still crop closer so that the dragonfly is more visible, which meant cropping closer to the dragonfly. I think it makes for a more interesting picture.

With my neighbor, I could have cropped it closer to see him, but I liked showing the scale of him standing on the roof, and his crepe myrtle stretching to the sky.

If you think about it, writing is much like photography. You want to keep the good parts, the focal point, and crop out all the unnecessary stuff, the noise, the distractions.

Speaking of writing, it’s back to Double Cougar Trouble for me! 🙂

Hope your week is going well!

Terry Spear

“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality.”

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