How to use crop tool

Can you see any similarity between these two pictures?

You surely can.

The picture on the right-hand side is a part the picture on the left.

When I take photos at home (mostly in my kitchen) I usually have loads of time to concentrate, think things through and snap a picture whose composition looks optimal to me.

But when I shoot outside things happen a bit faster in comparison to what I’m used to.

Well, nobody said life was going to be easy.

But instead of asking people and animals one by one to move more slowly for the sake of my photography I chose another tactics.

When I see something worth capturing I rather concentrate on preserving the activity itself than on an eye-pleasing composition of the picture.

I leave that till later.

This is the original picture – straight out of camera.

No editing at all.

I liked it but I thought that the funny action in the foreground deserved a little more detail.

So I clicked the crop tool from the left-hand tool palette and then selected the area of the picture that I wanted to keep.

Next I decided that a slight angle could work here.

So by holding the little square…

Not!

Not!

Not!

My hand just slipped (I was drinking mulled wine that evening, I think) and for the first time in my life I found out that you can rotate a crop – the little squares in the corners of the rectangular selection are meant for that.

I was amazed.

And then I clicked ENTER to finish the crop.

This is the new selection.

It looks much more funny this way.

I love it when accidents like this happen.

Has it ever happened to you, too – learning new things in photography by accidents?

Isn’t it awesome?