What’s wrong with this picture?

This modern sculpture looks especially dramatic with a mirrored highrise in the background. I photographed this in Chicago. Often when photographers are excited about photographing something, their enthusiasm eclipses their attention to detail and mistakes can be made.

In this case, my mistake was cropping the image too close to the sculpture on the right side. I didn’t clip the metalwork itself, but the edge of it is touching the edge of the picture. Almost without exception, this is a mistake.

The picture on the next page shows that I changed position slightly to give the artwork a little more ‘breathing room’. This also underscores the symmetry of the sculpture as well as the architecture.

This concept applies to pretty much any subject: People, wildlife, still lifes, trees, flowers, etc. In addition, it applies to parts of subjects. In other words, you shouldn’t photograph a dog, for example, with its tail touching the edge of the frame. For snapshots that are destined for social media, it doesn’t matter. No one will care. But for superior photography when you or other knowledgeable photographers judge your work, this is something important to keep in mind.

The original sky in this image was solid blue, and to give the shot a little more interest, dimension, and design, I added the sky with clouds. §