Cropping Exercise

I found this exercise to be the least time consuming of any we had this week.  I used the cropping tool on GIMP that allows you to move the margins around easily before you crop.  When I take photographs, I'm careful about what I am choosing to put in the frame, so when I was going through my photos, I had some difficulty choosing one that had enough interest to crop.  I chose this picture from a Greek island I visited in 2005.  The blues in the photo really intrigued me and I remember trying to fit the building in the frame and the boat passing by.  There were many ferries that came through that bay and I waited until I could get the front of the boat and the building.  I did not want to have the back of the boat in the frame.  I also remember having difficulty with this building because the shape is more square than rectangle, so to get the entire building I had to zoom out which is why the background with the boat was necessary.

When I was cropping the photo, I wanted to draw attention to a couple of things.  First I wanted to highlight the blue in the dome and the blue in the sky.  I also liked the curve of the dome and wanted to make that the focus.  Then I wanted to show the white of the building against the blue of the bench and show a serene and calming place to rest after a lot of walking and sightseeing.  Finally, I wanted to try to highlight the building itself without the background and the boat, but I am still not happy with the shape.  I find photographing buildings to be very difficult.  Often the best angles are not from the street but from places that one can not get to to be able able to shoot.