Maybe not a Ribbon, and maybe not as funny as the Rhinos, but still a decent placing in this competition. Beats the heck out of my 50%.
The look & pose captured is perfect.
:*)
I really like this photograph! The longer I look at it, the better I like it. At first I thought, needs more color and contrast. Too busy. No, it works as is because it shows wild animal use of camouflage so well. Good cropping. I like the dof.
I don't know nuttin' 'bout jaguars, 'ceptin' they be cool cats.
You may receive comments about the OOF leaves in foreground (nearly all viewers like having the frontmost element to be in focus), but I like to think it adds depth. The background colour of the tree suggests a coolness to the day and perhaps the cat too. The atypically drab environment for this beautiful cat might have provided an opportunity to really pump up the orange (saturation) in the coat and perhaps deepen the blacks (contrast). Unless there's an additional element at play, many viewers prefer having wildlife (esp. mammals) looking directly at the camera. I suppose it creates an otherwise non-existent connection between "us" and "them". Exceptions to the "look at me" rule usually involve dynamic action (growling, yawning, pouncing, pre-pouncing etc.).
In all honesty, this is a very average photo of a big cat, especially within the confines of this challenge, but there are a considerable number of images "worse" than yours. (I think your elephant photo would have taken you out of the average arena). Unfortunately, there's little you can do to improve this photo as any improvement would require changes in things you cannot control.
Timing can be (and usually is) everything for wildlife shots and you just weren't there at that decisive moment. What can you do? Keeping going back until you have the jaguar photo to end all jaguar photos? Perhaps.
Were I voting sincerely, this would end up with a 6. Because I think assigning numbers to images is meaningless, I'm giving you a 10 (yes I vote on all images, so it will count).
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