Need Crop Advice....

[Bobby Ironsights]

First off, I'd like to say, that the actual photograph looked really nice until I scanned it in at 72 DPI, now it looks flat, the shadow detail disappeared, the highlights look blown out, and the subjucts somehow started to look unhappy, particularly the man.

It might serve me right, for having a 40 dollar scanner/fax machine/printer/copier, but I've got no idea how I'll ever enter an online contest if my prints look horrible once I put them in..

That said, the print itself looks nice in real life. The neg's on tri-x souped in D-76, the print is on Kentmere souped in whatever developer the school uses.

What I do need is crop advise before mounting it, and giving one to the subjects. I need to get to that quick, as they have been married for 49 years, 3 days as of the picture taking, and I don't expect them to live much longer.....so I better get them the print before they croak.

Would anyone like to show me what they think the overmatted print should show?

 

[Sw1tchFX]

I would shave a little off the top and burn it an ever so slight vignette.

 

[nealjpage]

My suggestion: as you didn't open up the aperture quite enough to blur the background, I'd crop to just over their heads especially since I find the guy in the background very distracting. To offset the lack of top, I'd also crop a bit of the left side of the shot, but still leaving the collar of the jacket.

 

[Bobby Ironsights]

Well Switch, that was a thought too, but I thought of the time it would take to mask it properly, and actually get it done, and then clean up after....and I decided to just leave it as is, after all...

And try to get to other prints, what can I say?

My suggestion: as you didn't open up the aperture quite enough to blur the background,

I was just actually telling my GF'd the same thing, the background is distracting.

Problem was, I had to take the picture from this angle to avoid bringingthe large immovable garbage can to his left into the frame, and that put the couple out of plane with each other.

So to get them both in focus.....I was left shooting at f/8. But what can you do if you don't have tilt/shift, as with a view camera?

It was a real compromise.

But I think I was spending too much time thinking on it, so I just matted it on 11x14 bristol board, final print dimensions 6 1/4 by 9 1/2.

Here is about what it looks like.

Except with a fairly broad pasteboard overmat border out to 11x14.