In my last article, I spoke about using a Square Crop to enhance an abstract.
The original capture however looked like this image below. To get to the above image from the below we did three things:
- I cropped square to break the trend of landscape/portrait for people images.
- We cropped tight to fill the frame and enhance the abstract.
- We rotated our crop to work the white space in the corners.
So what happens if we go the other way and stay square and level with the crop but go the opposite of tight-in fact, we go so loose we run off the edges of the original capture. It might be a good time to go check out my article and video tutorial on Anti-cropping.
Essentially the goal is to use a little isolation by creating additional space above and to the facing side of the figure. When we do this in Adobe Photoshop™ using some content aware fill and scale to bring in some expanse to the universe of the figure, we create a totally different feel.
This idea came home to me when I was in NYC last year. The hotel in which I was staying was next door to the Crosby Street Gallery which was showcasing an exhibit of the Horses of Sable Island by Roberto Dutesco. There was an image of his that got me thinking of isolating subjects to corners.
Framed to gargantuan size and hanging on a wall in a gallery with a four figure price tag, it certainly garnered my attention. While it wasn’t a piece with which I was particularly enthralled, it did get me thinking about large expanses of space as a compositional element; hence the the decision to try this compositional treatment to the image below.
Folded in Space
by Rikk Flohr
Abstract evaporates. The image takes on an aloneness-a solitude-a frailty. Emotion explodes.
Same capture, same aspect, two crops: one tight and one loose. Which you choose depends upon your personal taste and the story which you are trying to tell.
Rikk Flohr © 2012
