Animals #466

To my untrained eyes this looks like quite a heart-breaking scene, as the animals look very underweight. It's a dramatic shot but is let down a little by a crop that is too tight on the animals, and gives them no room to breathe within the frame of the image.

Here's a shot for the Bug Photography Awards that are run each year on Photocrowd! This is a really well done portrait of this snail, nicely composed, sharp focus on the 'head' and lovely colours too. Great work!

This picture and its title 'German Shepherd on Rampage' made me laugh. What a nuts dog, chewing on a tree. Photographically it works , and is very engaging and well shot. The lead on the dog gives a hint of the owner, who must be wary of intervening!

There were lots of shots of domestic cats in this contest, and they need to be done well to catch the eye. Here the photographer has got really nice and close, removed all extraneous detail, and given us a well-shot study of the facial features of the animal. Cat's eyes are crazy things, and shot this close-up it makes foir an interesting image.

The symmetry of this shot works really well, and the blues of the water are very attractive contrasted against the sunlit bird. I like the positioning of the bird off to the left of the shot. The post processing is a little too heavy, and the sharpening in particular, which has created a tell-tale patterning on the image.

What an engaging shot, and I love the central placement of this little squirrel's beady eye! Whilst the squirrel is well exposed, the top of the shot is a little too bright, and overall I think that the processing of the foliage could be done better, so that the viewer's attention is brought more fully into the main subject.

What a gorgeous portrait of this little bird. To achieve sharpness on the bird at distance, with the shallow depth of field that ensues, is a real skill. And the photographer hints in their description of the shot that they don't have the most expensive lens to hand to pull this shot off. The handling of the background, providing a monotone setting for the bird, is what gives it its strength. I would be interested to see just a little more detail in the background, to provide a touch more context, but appreciate the conditions might have made those settings more difficult to achieve.

This lovely shot of an iguana almost made my Top 10, and I love the way that the animal blends so well into the grass. The shallow depth of field, with sharp focus on the iguana, really makes the shot. There are distracting elements in the top right, just to the right of the head, and to a lesser extent the bottom right of the image which could be easily removed with some judicious Photoshop work, which would strengthen the image.

My winning shot in this New Joiners 'Animals' contest is this beautiful shot of a Zitting Cristicola taken in India.. It's a joy to behold, and the shallow depth of field, dramatic setting of the vertical grasses and reeds, and gorgeous colour tone are all handled perfectly by the photographer. They were up early to get this shot, and were well rewarded!

This is an amusing and effective portrait of this little mutt. The face-off with the photographer really seems to suit their expression, and the high contrast black and white effect against the black background works well. There are some distracting artefacts at the bottom of the shot that need cropping out, and the overall quality of the image file is not perfect, suggesting it was shot on a phone, or has been heavily processed in a way that has degraded the file a little.