Dragon Wannabe

Welcome to NPN! An excellent start for a first post!

It's hard to tell at this size, but the lizard appears a bit soft. This might just be a lack of sufficient sharpening to the resize. Also, if you have a little more canvas on the top and left, the subject wouldn't feel so crowded. Either a complete photo of the lizard or a crop just before the back legs would be good.

You've done an excellent job of separating the subject from a very similar background.

Thanks Phil!

I learned about sharpening in Richard's class, but I forget to do it - hope Richard doesn't read this!!!

I went back and sharpened and cropped as you suggested - I think it looks much better, although still a bit soft. I originally debated using a shot with the whole lizard, but its tail is about 1 and 1/2 times the length of its body (quite a dragon tale - groan), so the lizard's head became pretty small in this size of a post.

I really appreciate your comments, and I'm going to try and post an image with those changes - we'll see if I get that right!

Joan,

I think the real interesting thing you captured here is the color on this males belly, that's his display. Whiptails do have really long tails and they usually hold them out straight.

Paul

Thanks Paul. Good to know about the display color. It's what caught my eye in the first place, so it must work! Hmmm ... hope it's not a mating display or it might mean I'm attractive to lizards - my hubby would be so pleased.

This guy had his tail on the ground, and I didn't get very good separation so it just blends in. Other than it's impressive length, it looked pretty blah in my shot.

Cool! Nice comp and colors. Head looks a bit OOF, manual focus might have helped or a smaller f.

Stan, yes, I completely agree about the focus on the head. From looking at the original, I think I inadvertently auto-focused on his foreleg; manually focusing would have been better. Re aperture, do you mean a smaller f/stop in number (say f/4) or smaller in terms of the opening (say f/11)? I'm guessing the former, but I'm having a lot of trouble with aperture, so I wanted to double check.

Thanks much!
Joan

I love the colors and he does look very dragon like.