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The late afternoon sun rakes across the landscape in Ramsau am Dachstein, Austria, as the crystal clear air adds a wonderful luminosity to the beautiful scenery.
Liz and I are almost at the end of our 10 day holiday now, and doing one of those walks that we promised ourselves earlier during our stay.
We timed our excursion deliberately to catch the sunset, with the promise of a nice meal to follow.
As far as this photo is concerned, it illustrates very well the art of leaving things out.
For a painter, starting with a blank canvas, there's no problem about what to include and exclude, or what size and shape to make your artwork, as all these factors are under your control. However, for the photographer, we're stuck with an image ratio of 3x2, whether that's appropriate or not.
That's why I find the crop tool so useful from an artistic point of view, and making a crop is often the first thing I'll do when making a final image.
In the case of these two photos the standard 3x2 format gave me two quite unbalanced images, while a serious crop in Photoshop resulted in a much more pleasing composition.
So don't be afraid of the crop tool, it's one of most serious artistic tools available to the photographer today.
Filename - mountain house 03.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 105mm
Exposure - 1/125sec @ f11, ISO200
Location - Ramsau am Dachstein, Austria
This image - 800x800px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - 1 stop under exposure used to hold details in the sky.
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