On Cropping and Panoramas

I'm going to start with the picture this time, no annoying words keeping you from seeing the point of this blog...

Antique Fire Truck/Bridge

This is fantastic.  The subject of this photo appears to be a fire truck.  A beautiful old one at that.  But it is so much more than that, too!  It seems like this was either purchased so it could be used as a bridge over the little river, or (even stranger) was just lying around and the owners realized it would make a great bridge.  This makes me want to be 8 years old so badly.  I would have spent the better portion of every free day climbing on the back of the truck and then across the ladder/bridge.  Did I mention that this is just in someone's backyard?  Who needs a jungle gym or swing set when you have an ancient fire truck to climb on?

I shot this photo with an 85mm lens.  This definitely would not have been my lens of choice for the occasion, but it was the one I had on me at the time.  There was no way I was going to pass up this photo opportunity, that's for sure.  But yes, a wide angle would have been much better, as would getting much closer.  And so, I shall go back to this area with a wide angle, and I shall knock on the door and ask them if I could get up close.  (I've learned that if you tell people you are more than willing to give them a beautiful print of whatever you want to shoot, they readily accept...give it a try).

I am lucky enough to have a pretty decent camera, as well as a pretty decent lens, so even though the lens wasn't what I would have used, had I had the chance to choose, I was able to make my end result something I am pretty pleased with.  What I did was crop the image in such a way that you get an understanding of what the ladder is being used as without having a ton of negative space.  I cropped tightly around the fire truck and left just enough water so you could tell that it was indeed being used as a bridge.  If my camera or lens were not that good, the end result would have been much more pixelated or fuzzy.  

There is another option, though.  One that I didn't even think of at the time.  I could have shot a few images and blended them together.  This would allow me to fill each frame with much more truck, and I could have taken however many necessary to get all of the ladder as well.  This would have been a much better option, but one, I didn't think of it at the time, two, I didn't have a tripod (which would definitely be necessary for a panoramic shot like this), and three, I couldn't get any closer.  So, I worked with what I had at the time and made it work, but next time I will return with a different lens, a tripod, and a smile that will hopefully get me permission to photograph a stranger's backyard!