Cropping part 2

The second photograph I chose for this exercise is a picture of Guildford High Street that I took for the focal length exercise.

There is a busker in the right foreground standing in a pool of sunshine. In the original frame, the busker is just a small detail in the foreground. I thought I could make him the subject of a photograph by selecting a small part of the image.

In the first version, I cropped out most of the buildings and the sky. I also cropped out the left hand side of the street and a narrow strip on the right hand side behind the busker where there is a distracting red strip in a window. The busker now becomes far more significant in the image frame, placed on the one third line.

The busker stands isolated and his isolation is emphasized by the group of shoppers in the distance who appear to be crossing the road to avoid approaching him.

Working on this sense of isolation, I tried a letterbox frame to include a couple of young women on the opposite pavement, as below.

I prefer this version as the feeling of isolation of the busker is even stronger. The wide angle of the lens emphasizes the emptiness of the street. None of the shoppers is showing the slightest bit of interest in the buskers music.