Use Everything to create Image

Many photographers believe that a good picture is one which is straight out of the camera without any alterations.

Agreed or not?

This is taken with Nikon D90 , 18-55 plastic zoom. I agreed this is an acceptable picture, but keep looking and I realised that the picture is simply boring. There is a whole patch of flowers in a pot, it is a recording of what went through my eyes.

Am I going to accept this image and move on to the next? I ask myself, what I want to show about this picture? Well, the flowers of course. The out of focus area is distracting,  and the white petals is very slightly overexposed due to the the dark flower pot and soil.

I cropped out the OOF upper portion while still trying to keep proportion to roughly 4:5,  and reduce the brightness by 2 notches.

Now I see a better picture!

Agreed that this is not a fantastic picture, but now it is acceptable because it is telling the watcher something about the flower. Such beauty, such purity, so refreshing.

So every photographer should use their software to crop and present what is the inner picture of a picture. Find and you may realised that there are so much being missed out if no one tries to unveil the real inner picture.

Please don't argue, even Ansel did that , why don't you....

For something more dramatic, how about this picture: 

Be Brave!