When photographing dogs in motion and attempting to fill as much of the frame with the subject as possible it seems to be inevitable that at least some of these images will have "missing" body parts...eg back feet, tail, etc outside of the frame.

In an image that is otherwise "good" what is an acceptable salvage in terms of cropping? For example, if the dog is in fully extended, running stride but the back feet are not in the frame can a good crop save the image? If so, where would the ideal placement of the crop be?

Thanks in advance for your comments

Kim;

In my opinion, there is no set rules, it is judged photo by photo.

It just depends. You have to either do it like you want it or like your clients like. I do a mix of both. What I like is not always what the client likes.

It depends on what is cut off on how tight I will go. Some parts you just can't live without

post the shot. . . .

Kim,
without seeing the shot, it's a bit hard to say whether or not it can be salvaged. If it's a moving shot of a dog either in Conformation or Agility, then you really need to have all of the dog. That's one of those things where you err on the side of too much air around the dog and do your cropping in post-processing.

A lesson painfully learned is never crop too tightly in the camera. You can always crop later but you can't add stuff in later.

Good luck,

Jim

Kim,
leveling the image is easy in Photoshop so that's no problem. If you shot jpeg, simply use the ruler tool to trace the horizon line and then go to Image/Rotate/Arbitrary and it will be automatically set to give you a level horizon.

Also, if you shot RAW, you can level it in ACR.

And, if you shot RAW, you can recover the edges by saving it as a DNG and dropping it into the DNG Recover Edges application. That will give you at least the right rear foot. The rest is a matter of cropping. Whether it's a good coursing image, I can't say. Not my game. But in the Agility Trials I've shot, folks expect the entire dog.

Jim

If the dog was stretched out in front, I would say crop it closer and emphasize the front. With it sorta being at a blah point in stride, I would just straighten it and leave it as is.

Thanks for the replies! It was more of a hypothetical question about salvage in general...this individual image (which I've trashed) was just used as an example.

The image wasn't bad and if I were shooting an event I wouldn't have trashed it. It just wasn't ideal

I have one that I cut the back foot off on, so, I cropped it closer to make it look I meant to do it. It was at an ok point in stride and I liked the intensity in her eyes.