I was looking for Screech Owls and knew something was living in the tree from the wear on the bark. He did peek out to let me know he was in there. … cute little guy. Lighting was not great.
any technical or composition feedback is appreciated
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D500
Nikon 500mm f/5.6
1/800 sec
ISO 500
F6.3
manual
What an amazing sighting! I think you captured the curiosity in his expression well. Really nice photo!
What a wonderful catch!!! I think lighting was perfect – in terms of softness. The red cast in the dark shadows under his head show less than ideal handling of the darkest tones. I don’t know how you process, but looking at the dark end of a curve, you’ll see that the red channel is darker than the others. The color can be neutralized by balancing the end point of the sliders in the 3 channels. That will be a subtle help with the rest of the image. This sort of thing is common with underexposure of the capture – try to keep the histogram off the left edge without blowing out whites.
Nicely done. I like the pose and the square crop adds a little extra to the comp. The image is slightly over-sharpened as the bark has some additional texture to it as a result from the sharpening procedure…Jim
Beautiful image and I just love that look.
I think if you slightly reduce the blacks, there’ll be more details in the Racoon.
You may also remove slight canvas on the LHS.
Thank you very much J Rajput, I will try those good suggestions.
Norma, the details in the Racoon and the tree are excellent…thanks to the nice soft lighting. Rather than crop the sky on the left, you might burn it in to reduce its brightness. How nice that it would peer out at you.
Norma, this is great, especially with the catchlight in the eyes.
I do agree that the left should be cropped out. The lighter background distracts from an otherwise consistent canvas (that great bark texture). And cropping will serve you well, as you’ll be able to present this with the raccoon’s face in the upper third… the image will be really well-balanced that way, IMO.
