2025-12-06_05-52-10.61_DSC9998.nef (21.9 MB)
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I quite like this capture from December 2025, but - even after coming back to it on multiple occasions - I am struggling with how best to present it. Currently as a 2:1 crop. By all means have at it according to your whims, but I am particularly interested in aspect ratio and framing variety, and reasons for your choices, if possible.
2025-12-06_05-52-10.61_DSC9998.nef.xmp (11.1 KB)
Edit: When I was editing, I was in a bit of a hurry. Here’s some additional explanation. I took the subject from the center. There wasn’t much of interest on the right side. The earth structure on the left, on the other hand, looks very intriguing and provides a good balance for the main subject.
I considered a square crop for this image. I focused on the crop rather than the edit.
2025-12-06_05-52-10.61_DSC9998.nef.xmp (15.2 KB)
A completely different take… I call this ‘Incoming!!!’
I wanted to focus on the little plants; just starting out in life (or so it appears)… only to be spotted by the ‘eagle eyed’ Moorhen… just my take on it (hope you’re not offended by this crop).
2025-12-06_05-52-10.61_DSC9998.nef.pp3 (16.5 KB)
I thought XPan worked pretty well. Maybe too much space on the left, but it shows where the bird came from while keeping them center and how their destination.
I like it just as you’ve presented it. I’m not a big fan of frames except in specific cases, but that’s more subjective. I think there are three or four points around which the photo revolves: the main subject, the reflection, the surroundings next to the main subject, and the background. In my crop, I’ve added part of the foreground to bring the bird up to one of the thirds, the surroundings to another, and below that, the least uniform part of the background that fills out the composition. It could be cleaner if it were cropped more panoramic. I hope this makes sense, as I’ve translated it with Deepl. 
The strong horizontal nature of the main subject - body pose, ledge in water, suggests that cropping in too much on the top and bottom to produce a wider, panoramic-type image will add too much tension. Since it’s more of a peaceful scene, I would suggest a more gentle crop:
To me, your current crop feels claustrophobic near the top of the frame, where it’s too close to the moorhen.
I would also suggest that because the Moorhen is the main subject and it already has a very bright bill and pair of legs, it’s not a good idea to enhance the background too much in terms of saturation and brightness.
I chose the “golden cut” ratio, because I like it and use it often.
My try. keep the hen on one corner with the wide expanse ahead of it. Nothing much else is required
