King of the Rock

Joseph,

I like the pose on this one, but I am not to sure about the crop, firstly I would consider taking some from the bottom and if you have it some more at the top.
I presume you left the space on the LHS for "look into" space but wonder if this could be reduced a little.
Finally the image looks quite dark on my monitor, I wonder if a little lightening of the darker areas using Shadows only on S & H, might give this a little more "oomph"

Hi Joseph. I really like the setting in your bear photo, the rock island identifies the bear as the central subject of the photo. This composition actually works quite well in my opinion. For me the main challenge I see is that you didn't have much light to work with and so the lack of a catchlight in the eyes leaves the expression a bit lifeless. I love the bear's posture with the extended paw and head turn.

Ken & Gary,

Thanks to you both for the suggestions. I brightened it up a bit, adjusted levels and tightened up the crop a tad and I do think this version looks a bit better. The great part of Katmai is that you get to see lots of bears at very close range displaying a lot of interesting behavior. The bad thing is that it rains, and rains and rains some more making for difficult lighting conditions much of the time. All things considered, I'll take the rain in order to get close to so many brown bears.

Hope you all like this version a bit better and thanks again....cheers!

Good work with the repost. I believe it is significantly stronger.

Joe you mention that this is one of your older shots. Do you happen to remember when you got it?....Izzy

Izzy - I shot this one in July 2008. We live in Florida which is great for birders but I prefer large carnivores so have to contend myself with 1-2 trips per year.

Thanks for the reply Joe. Reason I asked is because we were there in July of 97 (shortly after I retired).
Don't remember much these days, but I remebered that rock ........Izzy