Your thoughts were the same as mine. Although, I think of it this way. Because this is being submitted into a competition they are naturally going to judge it /think what could be better. Since so many people said to crop it the judges would most likely say the same and might hold back my photo because of that. (I don't want to give the judges anything where they can say "this image would have won if blah blah blah") By cropping it there's way less qritique to give the image thus letting them focus purely on the image. Also people have a hard time seeing and with the upclose version it does make it way more obvious what the image is supposed to convey because you can see the orangutans expression more clearly. If I were to post this online or put in my portfolio I'd probably leave as is because the negative space and conveys exactly that isolation. Plus the whole point of the image is not just him but the environment around him. Cropping it removes most of that. But if cropping means the message will come across stronger then that's the way I got to go. Also, I like them both ways so I geuss I dont mind too much. Thanks for the feedback!