Red Deer stag

I like the idea of the tight crop and the facial closeup with the one piece of grass looped around the antler but the OOF foreground does not do anything for me. I would much prefer to see a shot of the whole face without the obstruction of the OOF area. That is just my personal opinion and probably others will disagree.

I love these type of shots Ron! To me they are often so much more interesting than 'standard' full portait shots. The V-shape of the antlers justify the center comp in this case and make for a nice symmetrical image. The grass hanging in the one antler adds an element of interest that puts this over the top for me. Great work!
Btw: how much did you crop, the larger version still shows plenty detail?

Ron, I like this very much. Great effect!

D&L

Hey Vincent
This si about 70% of the original, I was quite close to the deer

Ron

I like the compositional element of both antler bottoms angling towards the corners and I like the really nice reflective eyes. I wish you had just a little more of the nose...Then I think that neat bit of hanging grass would become the accent.

Very impressive, I lke the symetry in this pic

Hi Ron,

An interesting idea - and one where folks will definitely have an opinion! Here's mine: while I tend to like shots where only selective portions of a subject is in focus and out-of-focus areas imply "hiding" (one of Jim Brandenberg's wolf shots being one of the more famous examples), usually I like to see LESS in focus than in your shot. So here I wish there were other natural objects obscuring more of the red deer and we had only a sharp eye (or eye and ear) to work with visually. But, as the comments above show, many others really like what you've done here, so it's obviously a success!

Cheers...thanks for sharing this...

Brad