Sometimes things look just as you want when you take the photo. Sometimes, however, it may take a little more work to convey what you want to convey with a picture. This is when it is essential that you have a clear vision of what you want the picture to convey.
This image is from a rusty ornate door. It was sidelit by late sun and this emphasised the warm rust colours and the texture. I wanted to convey this.
My first challenge was that the door was tall and my vertical shot of it would display so small on the screen that the texture would be lost. I decided to do a square crop of just four of the circular designs. DON'T BE AFRAID TO CROP. The best way to crop is with the camera but if a taken picture needs cropping then do it. Ansel Adams famously said, "There is nothing worse than a sharp picture of a fuzzy idea."
Having cropped the picture, my second challenge was that the gate wasn't actually symmetrical. It was thicker on the hinge side and the pattern was shifted accordingly. This would be very obvious in the tight crop. My solution was to rotate the picture ninety degrees. This would not be obvious for two reasons. First, the picture included nothing outside the door which would give any context to what is up or down. Second, I rotated the image such that the sun was coming from the top rather than the side. This is still a plausible scenario. If I had rotated the other direction (so that the sun illuminated from the bottom) then the image would have looked very "wrong".
Both the crop and the rotation could be considered "falsifications" of the image but this is a falsely purist viewpoint. I start making judgements about the world the moment I take up the camera. In this case the "truth" of what caught my eye (the colour, texture and symmetry of the design) were enhanced by my actions.
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