The Lens

I like the compositional shape of this close up. That liquid eye is a real draw and your exposure looks perfect. I find the errant stems a wee bit unfortunate, but you have to be happy with the overall effect of this capture.

Thanks for posting in fauna gallery. Please be willing to share more of your images and I especially encourage you to provide some thoughts on the images of others! Everybody's point of view is valuable.

I love the light in this photo, and it's nice and sharp as well. The composition doesn't work well for me, though - I feel there's something missing and of course there is I somehow feel it would have worked better if you had had eye contact with the lion, hope this makes sense.
Ingrid.

Love the stare, and the lighting is great. As for the comp, I like it, but would like to see his nose included. Maybe that wasn't possible with the fixed lens.

I quite like this Srinivasan. The light is to die for and the detail is great. I have tried similar compositions with excluding the nose/mouth region to make the eye the absolute focal point and think they certainly can work very well. In this case however I think cropping a sliver off the bottom will strengthen the comp. The OOF stuff is a little unfortunate here indeed, but the eye is enough of a strong focal point to sort of look past it.

Thanks Guys for comments. I am here to learn.
Cheers

the light is magically captured as well as that liquid eye. details are great and the crop works well, even if,maybe or maybe not, a slight cut on the bottom and on the right might have given a terrific impact.
I'd like it was mine ...