I'm sure anyone of you guys had this problem before. I have this picture, I see some quality in it, But I just can't frame it, not sure of what side to remove, what to reframe. Do any of you have a suggestion and advice?

Ahhhh! I love the chain, the rust, but I find the background a bit distracting from the main subject...a shallower DOF might help here. Also the way you have the subject positioned I would suggest a portrait rather than a landscape orientation for this composition...I hope this helps!

Gotta agree with PinkClown on this - of course, it makes a difference depending on the message you want to convey. What was it that caught your eye in the first place? If it was the rust on the chain - crop in tight on the rust - if it was the was the chain looked in its environment, then you need to look for a composition including the environment that conveys that feel.

I took the liberty of cropping your existing shot to give (at least my idea).

Wolf

I tried that type of croping, was not sure about the composition. What caught my eye. Well, the rust and the industrial feel of it. And the fact that it was a huge chain (this is actually 8" wide) Thanks for the info guys! advice is always good to ask around sometime.

Here's a real "quick n dirty" example of selective gussian blur on the image to give the impression of shallower DOF to focus more on the chain...as Wolf said however it all depends on the context you want to show the subject in. If it's possible, go back and take more shots of this using different settings on your camera, such as larger parture for DOF and from a lot of different angles...you have a good eye for spotting the potential in this.

pature = aperture..DOH!

If I were shooting this chain and it is as large as you say, I would probably try an extreme closeup shot of the bottom 1/3 of the chain and boost color and contrast to emphasize the rust...but this is my style and I don't mean to try and steer you towards it, just offering an alternative viewpoint.... Jack

jacoggins - given the size of the chain, your "open compositional" representation may be the ticket! "Too big to fit in the frame". This type of composition does give the feel that "the chain goes on forever". (I'm sorry, I hate it when people write in "quotes", but I'm about too "drunk" to write in a "normal" way. I hope you 'understand". All kidding aside (who's kidding) - when I toggle back and forth between the full chain image and the tightly cropped image that jacoggins posted - the first looks more like an industrial bicycle chain - and tha latter looks more like an industrial, nothing but business chain. Good call, ja!

im not quite shure about this one. an extrem closeup like jacoggins suggested might be a way. but basically i go with punkclown. the selective blur/DOF correction is for sure a good way to improve the picture. and i think its a good idea to go back to make some different shots. your original shot is not suitable for a portrait orientation cropping. but as punkclown said: "you have a good eye for spotting the potential in this."

...what about this one?

Hey Brub, I gotta tell you that you did find an interesting subject matter there, but I find that your original image looks better than any of the cropped ones (no offense to anyone, just my opinion!), basically because it has a richness of color and detail. I think the tilt of the camera did take away from the image a bit and made it somewhat confusing, as it seemed to turn the chain into something of a miniature roller coaster track. I attached an image that's just your original image tilted and cropped to remove the blank corners that resulted from tilting it. I'm not sure if there's much you can do to change the original image in a meaningful way. At that angle it's rather difficult to tell what it is you're looking at, and eliminating more of the background just doesn't clarify it. Personally, I would have had the camera more to the right of the chain. This would have captured some of the side to give it more depth, hid that blank dark area in the corner, and brought more of that yellow sand into the image to add to the color detail. The shallow DOF suggested by punkclown might not be a bad idea, but the subject matter looks a bit flat from that position. If you can see more of the side and overall contour of the chain, or get the camera so close that the chain gradually blurs into the background, I think it would be a much more effective technique than just blurring the background out. Oh, and if you do get more pictures, definitely try turning your camera to take some portrait shots (as also suggested by punkclown). It's a great way of capturing a 3 dimensional feel for that kind of subject matter.