Now, zoom in...! Oh, crop!
by theluissales

Comment:
Would have liked to have seen an even tighter crop, to me this is not a tight crop on a bird. Beautiful photograph of a Tri-Colored tho.

cradling the product to make it shine
by herfotoman

Comment:
Wow, I am surprised where you ended up. Was my number one photo from the challenge.......you should be proud of this image and definitely print it for display.

cradling the product to make it shine
by herfotoman

Comment:
I really love this one, my number one shot for the challenge.

Enthalled
by markwiley

Comment:
This shot would have been so much better from a lower perspective. Not a fan of kid photos from the perspective of an adult.

Alpha
by Phocal

Comment:
[user]ciaegle[/user] Thanks for the comments. I would have liked a different angle but a lot of times in wildlife photography you take what you can get and hope for a better angle/lighting/behavior the next time around.

Alpha
by Phocal

Comment:
ArnaMarie Thank you for your comments. I wanted more of the nose in focus but it would have required a much smaller aperture and would have pushed my ISO into the area where I would not use the photo due to noise. On a brighter day it would not be an issue but on a cloudy rainy day it was just not going to happen.

Alpha
by Phocal

Comment:
Not sure you will see this...........

Ja-9 Thank you for your comments. I am shooting µ4/3 so I get double the DoF of a full frame camera. So I had the DoF in this shot like shooting a full frame camera at Æ’8.0, so also the crop factor for µ4/3 is 2x and in full frame this would have been 420mm of reach (150mm lens + 1.4x TC = 210mm).I also did not want to go higher because I was already pushing my limit on ISO. Oh, it is also the angle that causes the DoF to look narrower then it is. This shot was taken at Æ’4.0 also but was almost strait on so you can really see it better.



[thumb]giantmike[/thumb] Thanks for your comments. I thought about cropping some but ended up going with the full frame. To also get the nose in focus (with the eyes) I would have had to shot at a minimum of Æ’13.5 (would give 13 inches of DoF) which would have taken my ISO entirely to high for me. I actually wanted to get at least the first set of side teeth in focus also but could not so I backed down to really draw attention to the eyes.

Alpha
by Phocal

Comment:
snaffles Thank you for the critique. I am careful around my gators, not suggesting anyone do what I do without lots of experience being around them (they are wild and dangerous after all). Unprovoked gator attacks are highly unusual as they tend to leave people alone. 90% of the attacks are from gators that have come to associate people with food because people think it's cute to feed the gators. Unfortunately this always results in the gator having to be taken care of, yes this means killed. This is also one of the reasons you should not clean your fish at the lake and throw the remains in the water, gators don't take long to find places that people do this and this also leads to their association of people and food.

In this photo he was bellowing at me. Here is a video I took of a different gator bellowing. They don't always open and close their mouth but the up and down action is part of the bellow and that is what this gator was doing when I took the photograph. I also have the color version and it may show better that he was a wild gator, not sure. I went black and white because I had not done a B&W edit of a gator shot in awhile and I like how it shows the texture of these wonderful and amazing animals.



Here is a link to my gallery of gator shots

Aqua Force
by LN13

Comment:
I wish you had shot this at a different time. The entire fall is in shade and the dark trees to the left make it seem even darker. The background has such wonderful colors and draws my eye to it vs the waterfall.

Fire power
by Scapeshots

Comment:
Unfortunately you either took the photo to close or cropped to close. This photo really needs a bit more behind the truck and good amount of empty space in front for it to head into. It is just way to cramped for my taste. Other then compositional taste, the rest of the photograph is magnificent.