giraffee
by jenlund70

Comment by Frankie_Lv:
Hi Jen,
Nice image for having limited control of a boxed in moving subject. With that being said, there are three distractions in the background. First the patch clear sky, second the animal just under her chin and third that green leaf (bottom) is reflecting way to much light. As for your main subject, in any wildlife image we must have that catch light in the eye, it's missing here. Your exposure looks fine to me the shadows are what hurt you here. I think what would have been of great help to you in this situaton would have been shooting in continuos mode following the giraffee has she walked along or turned her head. This would have given you a better chance to eliminate the shadows get that catch light or both. With that, I still think this is a great image taking into account the conditons I mentioned above Nice Image !!!!.

giraffee
by jenlund70

Comment by Maverick:
Looks a little underexposed to my eye. Could be easily fixed in Photoshop though.

giraffee
by jenlund70

Comment by jblaylockrayner:
Nice and simple - background a little distracting - Some fill flash could have helped with the shadows.

giraffee
by jenlund70

Comment by snaffles:
good shot of a difficult moving subject, light not great but you cn hardly get one of these in a studio! Good work 7

giraffee
by jenlund70

Comment by DavidLopez:
Very nice...

giraffee
by jenlund70

Comment by galblue:
face needs fill in light eyes are dull missin catchlight

Up ahead in the distance...
by jenlund70

Comment by timfythetoo:
Greetings from the Critique Club -

Editing is what can really take an ok image and boost it forward. I hope you find DPC a great place to learn more about editing. Everything I know about editing has come from the threads, images and people here at DPC.

I think the editing on this image is what hurt you. The scene is ok, nothing really wow about it, but the editing is pretty rough. Detail has been lost in general, there is a bit of noise in your sky and the colors have a bit of an odd feeling to them. It just has a dark and overall flat feeling to it.

I know this sounds a bit harsh and I can't really give you specific suggestions editing wise as to what to do different as I dont know what the original looks like. So I cant offer up options as to what you could change. But I can suggest highly finding someone here at DPC whose work you like and see if they would be willing to answer questions and/or give suggestions and tips to editing your images. There are alot of poeple that are more than willing to give some tips and help you along to learn some of the basic PS skills and tools that will give you images more in line of what you are looking for. This place is a treasure trove of info. Use it as best you can and yoru images will improve and your scores will go up. Most of all try to always have fun here. Dont let low scores or off comments get you down. This place is a blast. Dont let it be anything else.

Hang in there!

Tim

Up ahead in the distance...
by jenlund70

Comment by Haneck:
This is really pretty! Usually having a bright sky and a dark ground doesn't look nice, but here you've used it to our advantage, and it looks awesome!

Buzz
by jenlund70

Comment by diablo2097:
Critique Club

Composition
I think that the picture is a little bit too loosely framed, and that a tighter crop would have helped, but since this is minimal editing, you need a bit more zooming in (or a proper macro lens). The challenge is "insects", and tighter framing would have made the insect stand out more. On the upside though, the background is quite funky.

Lighting
Like you said in your description, it definately is underexposed, and i'd say you lost a good amount of votes because of this. In the future, if your ever worried about exposure, shoot a few shots, above and under what you think is right.

Technicals
The image is a little bit soft, and I'd say that using f/22 didn't help you with that. I'm guessing you used f/22 to maximise depth of field. However after about f/16, a lens loses a LOT of sharpness due to a think called diffraction. Try to use an aperture smaller than f/16 when possible, even for landscapes. use this website to work out what aperture you can use //www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Subject
Theres definately an insect, so i guess i can't complain, but a bit more focus on it would have helped

Overall
I know i've given you a lot of negative comments, but I'm trying to give you some real feedback so you can learn, and improve for the next shot :) ... On the upside, I can see you were trying to use the rule of thirds, and that has DEFINATELY helped this picture. Look forward to seeing more of your work :)

Tree
by jenlund70

Comment by JamesA:
seems a bit under exposed, abit of photoshop would work a treat