Crop conundrum

[Hminx]

Shot this friday morning on way to work, titled " Islands in the fog". My issue is where to crop so as to get the horizon away from the middle, but keep the best of the various elements for a reasonable composition. Appreciate any thoughts.
​Exif 1/2 sec, f 9, 100iso, 63mm oh and +0.3 ev for some reason....

 

[Rexer John]

Lovely dreamy photo, nice shot.
​With the band of cloud above the horizon, it doesn't give the impression of the photo being cut in half.
Having said that, I think I would crop the upper cloud out and it does look over exposed to me and lacking contrast.

It may well have looked as bright as the photo in real life but this is my take on how I'd do it.

 

[Eduard]

The challenge I see with cropping this image is the brightness of the sun. My first instinct is to crop the top of the clouds off (10-15% of the top of the image). A tough decision is whether the lower right corner stays or goes. I think I would crop for a pano effect.

I downloaded the file, opened in PS CS6, cropped, adjusted in Color Efex Pro 4 and HDR Efex Pro 2 to get the result below. (Your profile indicates that it is okay to edit images.)

 

[Axemaniac88]

Both of the changes suggested by John and Eduard are very good and I would apply both of them to the image. The original does look slightly under-exposed and could do with a touch higher contrast. I think the crop applied by Eduard is spot on too. Must say though, it's a great capture in the first place! :encouragement:

 

[Dave_W]

I wouldn't crop it at all, instead I would spend some time working on the PP and then see if a crop jumps out.
​

 

[Knawx]

I found by removing the objects in the bottom right corner, the image felt more balanced. I also made small changes to the exposure in PP.