Flirt with Me!
by jseyerle

Comment:
Color, line, lighting, and composition are super. While I greatly appreciate the extreme softness of the background, I do wish the neck of the bird were not quite so out of focus. While the bird's eye is the natural focal point of the piece, man's eye is naturally drawn to the large light stretch of the neck that is out of focus and this weakens the effect considerably, IMO.

Captive Gaze
by KaDi

Comment:
I love the way the wire fence frames the eyes. We are left with a strong impression that the bird is a sentient being and that she sits flightless but safe behind this fence sadly dreaming of a wide open range. For the first minute I spent with this photo I strongly resented that the wire cut off her beak. And then I discovered that this sentiment somehow put me metaphorically on the same side of the fence as the captive. Now all I can say is Bravo. It's brilliant.

What is this guy doing
by TroyMosley

Comment:
The beak is very nicely focussed, but both eyes appear to be fuzzy. Nice 'expression.'

Crane
by tsheets

Comment:
The subject is interesting and attractive. The lighting does a great job describing to the viewer the shape of the crane. Unfortunately, most of us are used to wildlife shots of birds that more completely blur the background. Fortunately this background is full of fine-textured things, but somehow enough of that texture is evident to distract one's attentions from the subject. Finally I find the cranberry splotch on the crane clashes a tiny bit with the yellowish green of the background and find myself wondering whether a touch of selective desaturation would not fix this problem.

Baby Porcupine in a Tree
by tjbel05

Comment:
The subject seems a little dark. Everything else seems a little confusing.

Crowned Crane
by Pug-H

Comment:
Wow, great use of lighting. It's a very attractive subject. The bokeh is very nice. Crisp focus everywhere except for a few strands in the upper left. Given DPC's usual tendency to slam lack of sharpness, I'd have been tempted to crop the photo so it is vertical, but I suppose this might do too much violence to that glorious luminescent crown.

It's in the eyes..
by docpjv

Comment:
Vewwwy big puddy tat! Every bit of the execution of this photo is perfectly done. The framing is perfect. The focus is perfect. The background is very strongly blurred. The subject is compelling. It's a really good photo, yet there is something about it which bothers me. It has something to do with that big white blotch in the background. I think if that big white blotch were all through te background the photo would be better. And I think if it were not there at all the photo would be better. And I completely reallize that in photos such as this, one simply has no control over these sorts of things.

Monkey Business
by ShutterPug

Comment:
I find that when I go into the yard to take photos of things I inevitably find weeds in the way and few photos get started without some preliminary weeding. In this case, I think a pruning sheers would have helped much, for the subject is upstaged by ten brightly lit leaves. And speaking of pruning, I'm not finding anything in the left third of the photo that adds anything. The subject has a cute face and is placed very artfully in the tree. Unfortunately the harsh lighting keeps us from seing any textures in his coat - especially in the shadows. So the subject ceases to be a stuffed animal, but becomes a caricature of a stuffed animal. This might have worked tho your advantage if somehow the rest of the photo had been made a caricature as well ( not sure what this would mean in practice.)

Attitude
by pawdrix

Comment:
You say tomayto; I say tomahto. The expression is priceless. I love the shape and the way it is framed: it is cropped very carefully. The rich tonal variation on his neck and chest is exquisite. I'm a little wierd about finding colors distracting - but I wonder if you considered desaturating greens and reds so there is less distraction in the BG. In any case, it's a super photo. I'm green with envy.

On the Prowl
by awpollard

Comment:
The shallow DOF is perfect, Focus sharp. Good choice to give the cheetah room to roam on the left side, but I wonder whether the photo might be just the tiniest bit less static if some were shaved off the right side.