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Hi Karen,
One thing that many photographers shy away from is cropping in the camera – this image is a classic example!
As I look at this photo the first thing I want to do is to crop it. I want to remove the rocks from the foreground and I want a closer view of the sunrise and the yacht floating along on the horizon. Now, if I crop this image in the computer the first thing that is going to happen is that I will lose a lot of information from the scene; and that is a bad thing!
You made this photograph using a Canon 600D (an 18-megapixel camera) with a Canon 55-250mm lens attached. What I notice though is that you made the photo at the 70mm setting on the zoom lens. Ideally I think this image could have been photographed at the 140mm setting… that would make the scene appear twice as close as it really is.
Now, if I crop the image in the computer to the equivalent of the 140mm setting on that zoom lens I am going to loose 75 percent of the image… suddenly that 18-megapixel photograph has turned into a 4.5 megapixel photo!! We have just wasted 13.5 megapixels from the photo!! Not good.
So, my advice for next time is not to be scared to use the zoom lens on your camera. You will get better quality images by doing so.
In the example below I have cropped the image and placed the horizon line on the lower “third” of the picture. I have then used the Clone Tool to shift the yacht onto the lower right hand third of the picture. I have also added a Graduated Neutral Density filter effect to darken the sky. I'm not suggesting you should do this in post-production, but I do think this is the kind of composition you should be trying to create with your camera.
Image Doctor's edited version
