To crop or not to crop: Eurasian wren

[Krawuntzel]

Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes); my first fairly decent picture of this shy bird.
Looking at the RAW I asked myself:

"that is the question—
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,"
being in this case the rather bright and not so interesting part to the right:



"Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them?"
meaning to crop more.



What do you think? and my excuses to Shakespeare for borrowing.
Erwin

[Downrigger]

Really nice capture. Nicely sharp, too, but not so much so that the tighter crop doesn't present a little softness - and compositionally I would think a crop between the two, and one the presents more negative space to the right, might be a nice compromise.

[Lucky Luc]

The uncropped version for me.

[Stryno]

I don't have a fitting quote, though I will admit I tried to think of one. I say no to the crop, only with the void do you contrast the detail of the little bird, with out it, it is centered, and the detail completely covers the piece, the angle of the rock cuts the image in half, and the bird isn't interesting in itself to hold the center of the composition. Without the crop we have the anticipation of where the bird is heading, is he about to leap?, should he stay?. In the cropped version he just is, he is a bird in a picture. If it was in a magazine article, or a blog post, about that bird, then the crop would work, but as an image, as a piece of art, he needs the space to live.

[Shadowman]

I'd go for the uncropped as well, image lost a bit of sharpness in the crop; did you sharpen again after the crop?

[IzzieK]

I go for the uncropped version too...and +1 to Chuck Smith's comment and reasoning.

Yes John, very seldom do I not sharpen after PP because it helps when uploaded here at CiC, some of the shots becomes a bit soft...unless you intended it to look that way as a preference.

[Barbara Ponder]

I vote no crop! Nice capture of an interesting little guy!

[NorthernFocus]

Really nice capture. Nicely sharp, too, but not so much so that the tighter crop doesn't present a little softness - and compositionally I would think a crop between the two, and one the presents more negative space to the right, might be a nice compromise.

Ditto my thoughts. Plus darken the offending BG a bit.

[NorthernFocus]

thusly

[JBW]

As was pointed out to me on a few occasions the eye enters a picture from the top left and travels in and down. How about a flip so the beak and not the backside is what the eye is drawn to? Just a thought.

[bnnrcn]

Very nice bird, I like Dan's edit

[jcuknz]

As I see it on my monitor the right hand side is glaring at me and if not cropped, which as done has the bird in the wrong position in frame, it should be toned down in brightness. In the crop the birds back-end to too far from the side and that also needs to be cropped. Flipping has the advantage that it places the dark tones on the right as a barrier to the eye moving right out of frame with the birds direction helping that as well ... though again the birds beak is too close to the edge relative to the back-side.
Whatever a lovely shot, not presented ss good as it could be.

[Rebel]

Spot on Dan, thats the crop I had in mind.

[Krawuntzel]

Thank you all for very helpful and inspiring comments and "edits". I will spend some time to consider.

Most of you prefer the uncropped version, or a version cropped to show "less" tail and more space to the right; I agree with that; the bird was in a fraction of a second "leaping" to the right.
As to the flip proposed by Brian: Probably I "see" differently; I "read" a picture usually from left to right, even if the left is darker than the right.
To Dan's darkening the background: I will try it; still struggling with "partial edits". I do not use "A... " products, so I have to figure out how to do it.
To the differences in sharp-/softness: the crop did look on my monitor way to sharp - so I did only apply 1/2 of sharpening compared to the "full" version. I will have to check that in the future.
Thank you a lot
Erwin

[Whistletown Wilds]

I like the crop, and the reverse one works for me -nice shot!