which one would you choose? fun in the yard!

[Lightspeedfoto]

i'd love some input on these...the first one is original, the next 3 are different crops. taken on a 50d, iso 200 w/70-200 2.8L. F4, 1/250 Available light.

1.

2.

3.

4.

any suggestions or improvements on technique, cropping, colors, exposure, etc. please let me know. Thanks! Hope you enjoy as much as I do!

 

[icassell]

I'm not a portrait photographer, but I would definitely go for some variation of #1 or 2. I think the clapping hands adds to the image and I don't think you should crop that part off. I think 2 might be a bit too tightly cropped.

 

[Derrel]

I like the second one, since the child is sitting up tall, the framing should reflect that,and on the second shot, we have a seated child with a vertical framing. On the third and fourth crops, I am not sure why you are cropping to a horizontal format. On the third, you crop into his chin; it would make more sense to crop that as a vertical, and show us that he has a chin, and a neck, to support his head.

The fourth shot would make a nice head and shoulders shot if it were framed as a vertical; as cropped, it is a head and a lotta' background shot.

The exposure is nice, color's good too, but the horizontal compositions on 1, 3, and 4 detract a lot from the boy himself, because the horizontal framing in the original and in the two crops is subtracting subject (the boy) and filling the margins with background that's just out of focus empty space.