Cane Toad in Storm Drain

I photographed this cane toad in a storm drain in Costa Rica. He came back to this drain on multiple occasions over a few days, using it to hunt including at night. Here I captured him while it was raining and you can see the water flowing through the drain. He doesn’t look very big here but in fact this is a very large cane toad (the drain is just quite wide).

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Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Canon R5
Canon 70-200 F/2.8 L IS II

The toad is great, but the bright water distracts from the center of attention, the toad.

I really like the composition and your choice of framing!

You may burn the flowing water, so that it doesn’t distract from the subject.

Wow, an interesting subject you have here Dvir. The lighting was pretty decent inside that drain, so you caught lots of nice detail in this Cane toad and it stands up well when enlarged. Yeah, the water is a bit of a distraction; cropping would get rid of most and still retain enough of the drain.

I admire the creative composition here.

I see others are questioning the presence of the water… Though it does stand out tonally, for me the biggest contrast here is between the shapes. The narrow downward flow of that runoff seems to clash with the upward wide curves of the pipe. It’s sort of caught in between two options for presentation. You could probably go with a horizontal crop others have suggested, but my preference would be to go with a vertical crop, since I think the flowing water is the more important element to telling this story.