Cropping, and the essence of "forkiness"

[anneb]

One of my fork shots from this week, two very tight crops:

This is actually only about the center 9th, give or take, of the full image, it’s a super tight crop primarily because my stock-with-D70 lens only focuses up to 24″ or so. I played around with a bunch of different crops, and came up with the one I used for this week, and another one. I’m curious what people think.

So, like when you go to the eye doctor- which looks better?
“A? or…. B?”
or, “C: The Studio is not the place for you, get back outside and stick with action sports-forks.”

[schnee]

A – you are already cropping the red-orange-yellow fields and the left-hand-side of the fork, cropping the end of the tines adds “balance”. In B, as my eye traces to the end of the tines, it is kind of left hanging there with no clue where to go. With A, my eye traces the tines and get to the edge of the photo and is OK with that since every other edge is likewise cropped.

[Elsinore]

Well I’m with schnee that A is better than B, and he has sound reasoning, though I’m not sure it’s the same reason A appeals to me more than B. I’m sort of thinking aloud here, but I think the crop on A makes it a bit more abstract and less obvious than B. A is much more visually interesting, and the colors actually become more of the focus than the fork itself. When I look at B I think “oh…a fork on some colored napkins” while looking at A, I’m thinking “oooo colors! lines! angles!”

[Author]

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