Cardinal
by jmritz

Comment by zxaar:
OOOOOOOO, the blur has killed it. Could have been a good photo but the blur. I am not sure if it was intensional but it does not gel well with DPC crowd.

Cardinal
by jmritz

Comment by Zoomdak:
Nice picture of a cardinal (and I love cardinals). Doesn't quite have the technical aspects and wow factor DPC likes though. First off, yeah, the image is relatively sharp, but not tack sharp. The composition is well, sorry to say, kind of boring. It is all centered. My eye is immediately drawn to the eye of the bird, but there isn't much to look at after that. I would like to see a little bit deeper DOF, but it looks like that'd be hard to do with this bird and those lighting conditions. Still, impressively close shot of a cardinal.

Cardinal
by jmritz

Comment by Yo_Spiff:
I don't think out of focus or dpeth of field was really the problem. Though his eye is nice and sharp, the beak looks like there was some motion blur going on. I the beak were as clear as the area behind it, I don't think the rest of it would have been as big a problem, but my eye is drawn to the blurry beak.

Cardinal
by jmritz

Comment by MaryO:
You're right, the eye is sharp, but the beak isn't. He could have been in mid-chew; at f/8 it shouldn't be a DOF issue. I think people expect the eye and beak to have the same amount of sharpness since they're usually the same distance from the lens, and either one being soft loses you points. Plus there's the added factor that some voters were probably tired of birds by the time they got to yours!

I really like his position in the image and the eye contact is pretty darned cool. You really did get phenomenal detail in that eyeball.

Cardinal
by jmritz

Comment by BAMartin:
I love the vibrant colors on this bird, and I too am amazed about how close you got. He is looking directly at you and the eye contact is the nicest thing about this photo. It appears that you might have a little camera shake but that is not too surprising at 1/60.

Cardinal
by jmritz

Comment by figaro:
Wow, I don't know how you managed to get that close to the bird with that lens. There's a real sense of perspective and an interaction with the bird which is excellent. As has been said before, it's not sharp, due probably to the inadequate shutter speed/focusing issues. A sharper shot would obviously have scored better, and I would have gone for a wee bit more contrast as well.

Dawn
by jmritz

Comment by gjumi:
A slice of moon in the sky, a rhythm of waves on the lake...

Dawn
by jmritz

Comment by mchalmers:
This is a great photograph. The colours are beautiful!
This challenge is very open to interpretation, so I'm not going to claim that this is a 'shoehorn' (Though others inevitably will). However, this just doesn't speak to me with respect to the challenge. My opinion.

Cardinal
by jmritz

Comment by tjbel05:
Focus is a little soft.

Cardinal
by jmritz

Comment by VitaminB:
Nice capture, just that the focus is too soft on parts of the beak.