Cropped or not?

[Kris V]

I took these through the window of a driving car.
Which one works best: cropped or OOC? Or crop further on the right and eliminate the street sign as well?
Colour or B/W?
Recommendations?

[Donald]

Kris - What are your own views about the strengths/weaknesses of each?

[glenng]

Convert it to B/W and not cropped for me.

[benm]

I like the crop on the right but I would keep all of the foreground.

[FrankMi]

Hi Kris, a lot of different responses are valid but the appropriate ones will depend upon your goal for this image. For example, what emotion do you want this image to convey to the viewer? That is, what do you want this image to communicate?

[Kris V]

Kris - What are your own views about the strengths/weaknesses of each?

I'm seriously considering cropping farther to the right, and do away with the street sign. And I'm leaning towards keeping the coloured version.
Weekness: The fact that I had to take the darned picture through the wind shield of a driving car. (Dark streaks on the left side in the cloud formation).
I don't recommend stopping in the emergency lane of the freeway to take a picture of the City of Houston!
This is one of the few locations that's not crowded with wires that need to be cloned out! I consider that a +++++
What I really like is the way the late afternoon light falls on the buildings, and the dramatic cloud formation. Doesn't happen too often here.

[Kris V]

Hi Kris, a lot of different responses are valid but the appropriate ones will depend upon your goal for this image. For example, what emotion do you want this image to convey to the viewer? That is, what do you want this image to communicate?

I didn't think that through when I took this series of pictures while we were on the freeway. But cloud formations like these are not around very often, so while I had a chance, I took advantage of it. Then see how far I could push the envelope in PP.
(Got a couple more to process).

[FrankMi]

I didn't think that through when I took this series of pictures while we were on the freeway. But cloud formations like these are not around very often, so while I had a chance, I took advantage of it. Then see how far I could push the envelope in PP.
(Got a couple more to process).

This is an excellent image to play with in post processing!

Just a couple of thoughts then. Text in an image is usually one of the first things the eye goes to so if it isn't the subject then it is best avoided or subdued. Cropping out most of the right side will likely throw the image off balance and cloning out something as large at the street sign may not work very well. You could make the street sign ‘fuzzy’, but that in itself would be an attention getter for a sign this prominent.

I would consider softening the focus on all of the signs on the right except the street sign. Because the text is very simple there, the eye won’t linger. That will also give you the option of using most of the image and keep the driving lane centered and therefore more natural looking for this scene.

I would also soften any of the vehicles that are easily distinguishable as you don’t want the viewer thinking about specific make and models they may have memories about. The goal should be to bring their attention to the parts of the image, hopefully the main subject, that you want them to spend time exploring and enjoying.

You will want to make the subject (clouds and/or buildings?) stand out a bit to captivate the viewer’s interest. This can usually be done with subtle differences in sharpness, contrast, brightness, and/or vibrancy. Not much, just enough to provide some separation from the less interesting elements in the image.

Lastly, if you are into practicing your post processing skills, there is a white halo around most of the buildings on the skyline to consider.

Hope this helps!

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Kris,

My 'take' on this, bearing in mind your reason for shooting was the clouds/sky;

Rotate clockwise slightly; all the verticals are leaning to the left at the top (a bit)
Crop foreground as you have in #2
Leave it the full height though of #1
From the right side; crop to the left hand edge of the vertical support of the signs on right
Clone over the remaining bits of two signs in shot, these will now be just rectangles poking in from the right hand edge
Crop some way in from left edge of frame to balance the lanes with what has been removed from right
This leaves it as a vertical orientation shot
Try not to have the halos on the buildings
Try to remove the remaining dark band in the sky from the glass reflection

It'll be vastly different, but may be what you were looking for (but I give it about a 30% chance)

Hope it helps,