Crop and turn a bad picture into a good one

Some people take pictures with planning and care. They check the edges of their frame, their composition, the light, etc and try to take the picture in such a way that there will be minimal needs for editing it too much later on.

But when one is dealing with living things, particularly small ones with only a camera phone in hand, one just tries to take sharp pictures as much as possible.

Remember the creepy crawlies?

These little dudes were constantly wriggling away so much that it was impossible for them to be sharp if one went too near. This meant that my camera phone had to be further away from them.

To get this photo:

I had to crop it from this shot:

As you can see, not much thought given to composition there. I just tried to give them more space to crawl within the frame and click when the picture looked focused enough.

My best effort at going really close up was this:

I had the camera phone tilted, so the millipede’s head was nearer the lens and it’s tail was further away. That gave me a very clear shot of the tail, but the head ended up blurred. Since I knew I was going to have clear heads in the previous photo anyway, I  cropped away the head for this one, and ended up with this really clear, close up of the millipede’s behind.

Sure, the top half of the millipede’s body in this photo was still slightly out of focus, but I thought it was a good effect, and really focuses your eyes on its tail and legs there.

I caught a butterfly!

This morning while Donna and I were out for a walk, I saw these two butterflies that were a pretty lavender, fluttering around. They were small and I wasn’t too sure if I could capture them, since they didn’t stay still for long.

I took four shots and only this one turned out sharp:

But you can hardly see the bug!

Here is the photo cropped to show you the detail on it’s wing:

It was a wee little thing, whose actual size was smaller than the close up image of it here.

Donna dog

But mostly this blog comprises pictures of Donna. So here’s Donna’s photo for Movember 2013:

And here is the original shot, the picture above was cropped from:

Because seriously, I don’t have a dial on a remote control that manipulates what Donna does every minute of the day. I just snatch up my camera phone and snap and think about what to do with it later! :P

Three Tips for Taking Close up/Macro Photos

• Go close if you will, but always make sure the subject is clear and sharp.
  I sometimes over compensate by taking a couple more pictures since it’s hard to check sharpness on the small screen when time is ticking and the butterfly is going to fly away.
• Leave yourself the leeway to crop
  If you are unsure about the composition when you are taking the photograph, always go for a wider shot so you will have the option to crop it later on to achieve a more balanced picture. One has less options for cropping when one takes a tighter shot.  
• Be brave but not foolhardy!
  Crop to what you think is your ideal for the photo in terms of composition, but not too much or you will see the picture quality degrade and become pixelated. Doesn’t matter, you can always go back to your original and try to crop less closely the second time round.

Note: All pictures on this post were taken with an iPhone using Camera+ and cropped using Snapseed.