Highly interesting for me to follow your different cropping versions and to read the comments of Phil! And this crop # 4 is intuitive seen for me the most pleasing one too! There is a great feeling of balance and leading lines to the main subject - the owl! And this creates the special tension to your work! Thanks for sharing this "lesson" Nancy!
You have a good instinct for cropping, Nancy. By cropping the owl itself and moving it to the lower right corner of the image, it truly becomes a voyeur, intruding into the frame as a surprise, rather than a given. The context you wanted from the woodsy, soft-focused background still stretches across the frame, but now the unfolding branches lead us right to the owl, whereas before, they merged upwards into a tangle. The frame acquires a wideangle look, which greatly enhances your idea.
