I dont know, somewhere around here maybe-
maybe unnecessary, who knows-
for me it removoves another distraction and is slightly less arbitrary, which is usually good enough, unless I’m in one of my full frame moods.
I think if you were going to crop that much you may as well crop a little bit higher, so the bottom of the gate and the little bit of wall that touches on both sides are out of the picture. They seem to be half in half out there… I dunno I kinda like the bottom of the gate in (before the crop) it gives a definitive end to the picture. That’s just me though… and I like to not touch up or edit photos at all once they are taken… otherwise it’s kinda like cheating!! Couldn’t do it back in the good oul days of polaroid/film cameras! (unless you scanned them in of course!) So for me… cone in!!
ps… I see you removed the head too! I wondered if anyone has noticed him hiding there! lol!
People have always re-touched, its nothing new-
they just never told you-
They used knives, 00 brushes, masking fluid, rubylith, airbrushes, any number of things-
and still do. Its just that its so much cleaner now.
It depends what the image is for of course-
anyway, I’ll give up now-
Now that you have the two versions, maybe you should put them up for a head to (no) head?
conduct a retouching poll and see what people think about removing cones?
on second thoughts, it’d be far to complicated.