When taking images its important to notice the little things and think of how you want to crop an image before you take the image. Thinking of this from your eyes view will help you determine how you want to work to get the composition that you prefer. Granted my view may be a little different that yours or anyone else’s, but the rules are all the same.
Below is an image that I think shows this well. I saw the reflections in the bumper when walking by and thought, what a great image! I walked back around and looked at it a few different times trying to figure out how to take the image to get the reflections that I wanted. Finally I ended up with the image you see and didn’t have to do any cropping to achieve this.
This image is from a car (a Classic old Cadillac), and I was allowed to be right next to the car (without touching of course) so I had the ability to get as close as needed. In not all situations are we able to do this but you can always snap the photo to assist with the composition.