Ultimate Cropping

I got up early this morning and shot an Ultimate tournament (most people call it ultimate frisbee, but the Frisbee people get upset when you use their trademark in the generic sense). I got this shot early so I got to leave early. Which was good because it was damn cold this morning.

I also shot a Veterans Day parade. I haven't hitched a ride and shot a parade from on top of a float for a long time, so I figured it was worth a go today.

The results were mixed. It was hard to edit because I had so many photos from that angle they all looked the same to me. The group was pretty rowdy before the parade, but they seemed to calm down a bit once the parade started. It wasn't because I was there either. They weren't shy around me. I sat in the back of their truck for about 20 minutes before we actually started moving, and they were joking with one another and telling me stories about themselves. They were great fun.

My real problem, though, was this guy. I loved the photo I shot of him at the time, but when I got back to the office I couldn't decide how to crop it, if at all. This is the original image. I liked that I shot it horizontal and I got in the sign. Once I got it on screen, however, I realized the sign was too hard to read, making it insignificant. So I just started cropping,

and cropping,

and cropping,

There were like four other variations, and I kind of hate them all now. One of the problems working weekends is there usually isn't another photographer or photo editor around to give me there opinion. In other words, no around to save me from myself.