Another Seal

I didn't want this old bull seal to be lonely so I thought I would post him with the other seal shots we have had recently!

Techs

EOS 350D
Sigma 500mm @f6.3
Iso 200
Full frame - some tweaking of the levels

All C & C welcome

Aha Chas, you're asking for trouble after posting the crit topic

Need to think about this one, will be back to comment once I've cogitated...



A

I'll say the same now as I would have before your last topic.

Not doing anything for me!

The top half of this frame is featureless and yet it draws my eye every time I look at this shot. I wonder if shooting it in vertical was the best choice here?
The seal looks to be a good bit over saturated, almost as if the colour is dripping from it...some ppl like this effect, I'm not so keen.
I'm not too sure what you were after with this choice of composition...a soulful look into the distance? a look of don't come any closer 'cause I've got my eye on you?
If it's a soulful look to the distance I would reckon that shooting horizontally would have helped, but if it's the "I've got my eye on you" look then you are close, but we really need to be forced towards his eye and be able to see it looking a little more towards us.
I've never really been overly fond of seals and unfortunately this shot doesn't change my thoughts on them at all.

John

Hi Chas

I quite like it - the message the image conveys to me is an old bull looking out over his habitat and as Donna Knook is just sea an sand bars it works quite well. I also think the crop is OK although I may have cropped a little more from the top and left. I might also try to reduce the blue on the back of the animal although I'm not sure about this!

David

Hi Chas,

I don't mind the framing (crop) although I do agree that the top third is a little distracting. You could darken the top third down a bit to stop this effect. Also (for me) I'd clone out the yellowy/creamy twig on the seals body.

A good shot otherwise.

Rob

I dont mind the shot,it gives a seals eye view of donna nook,i think the crop as suggested by David would work

chas,

i've looked at this a while and tried to guage what you might have been trying to do. maybe you were trying to get the seal to portray a sense of being in it's environment, by looking out over it. ok good idea.

i think where it falls down is that we as viewers can't see really what it's looking at. ok, some people here know where it is so might be imagining it, but for someone that's never been there, this image falls short.

if you had done a wide angle shot, included the whole body, and big DOF so it was more an enviro shot, then that i think might have worked.

as it is, this is half portrait, half enviro. not enough impact from the portrait, and not enough enviro to be an enviro.

also i think your colour correction is a little off, the whole thing seems a bit blueish.

ok, that said, you did say you wanted critique, lets havethe next one!!!!

mark.

I think lose some of the top and take out some of the blue then it would work ok in a sequence in a slide show, though may not be the most powerful image as a standalone.

John

I think Mark has said it all for me.

This seems to fall between two camps - I don't have enough of the character of the animal or the environment to hold my interest. The large area of OOF body also bothers me.

That said I'd encourage you to keep trying different ideas like this.



A

Cheers Guys - I really appreaciate the feedback! I shall have a play with some different crops and see if I can work out what is going on with the overly blue colour cast.

Chas