I agree with the notion of cropping out a large section of the sky, but for aesthetics more than saving work retouching. When I scrolled the image up the page and eliminated most of the sky, the lines in the foreground immediately drew my attention upwards to the person and the horizon. I liked the result.
I think this would benefit from being cropped square. The bottom half of this is dynamic, and compels me to look at the person, but then I shoot past and hurtle into space.
Agree with both on the affect of the lines of the bottom half. My comment above was that the less retouching was a bonus not the reason for doing it. I could live with square or cropped but removing a lot of the top definitely strengthens the image.