Weekly Comp 283 'The Crop has it!' Qs & As

Seeing the demos I think tight crops were the order of the day. I didn't get the idea either at the time so I didn't enter. Some of these crops are far too tight for me, particularly Batman up against the edge of the frame and the cutting off of the tree in crop in crop. But that's personal taste and I do like the idea of the judge showing exactly what he means by having a play with the images.

Stan...
"A couple of Demo images (before and after) may have been more useful at the start of the competition so thickies like me could see exactly what was wanted rather than a "look what you you missed and this is what I meant after images""
My idea was not to give hints and tips in that fashion... rather, I wanted to see how well people cropped their images in relation to their given title.
I have been involved in display work since '64 and have often had to re-crop [with scissors of scalpel] other peoples work... to either fit the subject better.... or fit the display space.
In this instance I wanted people to fit their pictures to the subject [title].... and in the re-cropping I have tried to show that.

Dr Orloff...
"Seeing the demos I think tight crops were the order of the day."
No, they weren't... You may think that I have cropped too tightly... eg: Batman and Robin.... but that was deliberately done to 'fit' the title.
Had the title or comment [sub-title] been "Batman looks for clues in the moss... ably assisted by Robin" there would have been a need to leave moss to the left of Batman... as it was, the pale branch in the background on the left, distracted from the two subjects.
As you said, it is a matter of personal choice... and we are all up against that when entering competitions.

Thanks everyone for the post judging comments.

Finally

Alan...
"But seems a bit odd. Was permission sought from the photographers (copyright holders) to edit their images. "
No... but as Barrie commented... "a picture speaks a thousand words!"
Also, I don't know about you, but I enter these competitions to learn...
techniques, tips, skills and point of view, etc...
Looking at your pictures, it is a shame you didn't enter....
you may well have been in the winning group...
it is clear that you are skilled at cropping to a title!

And to both you and Pentaxophile...
yes, I was presumptious...
but for the reasons given above...
and all images were credited to their owners.

Have a thoroughly enjoyable end of year and may you all never run out of space on your memory cards in 2013