The Turn
by Phocal

Comment by tvsometime:
In my generation, you only saw muscles (and power) like this on a person of the masculine gender. voted earlier

The Turn
by Phocal

Comment by illini75:
You can see the power in her arms

A Long Day
by Phocal

Comment by snaffles:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Lovin the details of the board's graphics, the slump of his body, his tats, hair and the sheer exhaustion on his face say it all. I think you could have cropped out or even better, cloned over the border of green at the top, it does nothing for the shot but draw the eye there, and nothing's happening. Would have helped to fix that skew of the horizon, too. Finally if you had just tracked him for another second or so, pretty sure that board would have lowered at some point and then we could have seen his full profile. Here, he's partly hidden by the board and it just doesn't work :-/

Hope this has been helpful, feel free to PM me

Susan

The Turn
by Phocal

Comment by Ammie:
Lovely shot

Hello
by Phocal

Comment by snaffles:
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Great capture of an animal in its own environment - I could tell from the first glance that this was no zoo shot. Love the focus on the head, can just imagine how you felt when you met it. The sinuous body, the duckweed on the surface of the water, the natural lighting, good comp, though maybe a little more dof would be good. Shooting wide-open is pretty dicey esp with such a shallow dof.

But DANG! That branch! That is definitely a big part of what killed your score imnsho. As already noted, it decapitates the snake and thus robs it of some of its power. That, coupled with the DPC voter fraidy cat voting when it comes to creepy-crawlies and not kutesy kritters or majestic felines/raptors etc....*sigh*

Still, a very good image. Maybe just a little more pp contrast would have helped, but cloning out all of that twig would have been a major pain in the butt.

Susan

Sexy
by Phocal

Comment by Jules1x:
Hi from the Critique Club.

A great image that scored well, always a challenge to 'critique' these.

I was fascinated to read that this was taken in a State Park, wow. So this guy was roaming free? Incredible how you got so close.

I love the close-up aspect to this image, and your chosen aperture seemed to get the perfect amount of this creature in focus while nicely blurring out any distractions in the background. Excellent! I would be curious what this image would look like if the area of blurred foreground was taken out, or leaving just a slip of that foreground visible. This would have placed your subject lower in the image, but maybe an equal amount of the top of the image could also have removed to almost make this more of a fill-the-frame shot? Not sure if that would make this any stronger or not, you've got a strong shot as is. Well done and thanks for sharing.

A Long Day
by Phocal

Comment by tate:
I like the raw spontaneity. 7

The Turn
by Phocal

Comment by digifotojo:
Hope she made it! 9

The Turn
by Phocal

Comment by josaa:
Perfect action pic. 10

The Turn
by Phocal

Comment by skewsme:
them's serious biceps