Caught in the light

Interesting and attractive colors and textures Peter. Nice light. I personally feel that a bit more space on all sides would be preferable. The deer over all appears just slightly soft to my eye. You had plenty of dof and shutter speed to have a sharp image and we know that lens can deliver. I wonder if your lens focused on the grass just behind the deer?

That spot light on the face is what makes this image work for me Peter! Gary has some good observations about the focus. Sharpening may have increased that effect as well since grasses will be more prone to sharpening than the deer's head. The trick is then to apply sharpening selectively on the subject only.

Thanks for the suggestions on the image. I'm still learning about sharpening and haven't gotten into the selective process yet. I usually just do an auto sharpen when I close the image for uploading. Not sure about the focus. I usually prefocus on the head whenever possible but this guy was moving so I may have been slightly off on my aim. There's a number of stems of the star thistle that I perhaps should have cloned out and made the body a little cleaner. On the other hand this is the way things are in the wild. Are they enough of a distraction to the eye to remove? And I'll keep in mind about framing tightness all around in the future.