Studies on golden section

Here are three pictures I used to try and study the golden section. The first one is original and the latter two are cropped from the original.

I am not quite sure what to think of the results. First of all the original picture does indeed seem a bit dull after looking at the two cropped ones. There is way too much black around the candle but then again when I tried 10x15, 13x18 and 20x25 dimension on cropping the candle itself became way too dominant when trying to remove the excess black.

I suppose rational choise would've been to use manual cropping but that would have caused some troubles for my studies. Therefore I decided to use the 20x25 dimensions and ruthlessly crop out part of the candle and keep the focus on the flame instead. And so I tried two different croppings: a horizontal one and a vertical one.

On both pictures I tried to align the edge of the candle and the black background at the approximate 5:8 section of the picture with the flame slightly off the center. More so on the latter picture.

But as I said I don't quite know what to think of the results yet. They were done quite quickly and only like and half an hour ago. I have to just look at them and think over the way the picture is different with each cropping. I think I am on verge of getting the grasp on this but I still need more practise. Most of all I have to start taking my pictures so that I have more room to retouch and crop them later even though I strive to take such pictures that the cropping would be unnecessary.

It seems I have to find balance between cropping the picture while shooting it and cropping the picture later while retouching. I have a long path ahead of me.