OMG .. !! .. this is just excellent .. I LOVE HER EYES .. they do look very katee-ish .. !! .. AND THE BALL .. it looks all eaten away .. our dogs, both sasha and katee, tear all the outside material off tennis balls and they're left BALD !!! .. i love this photograph for her eyes and her wonderful expression, the way she's looking right at you, and the ball of course . !! ..:)
Great initial impact - the dog, the eyes. The shallow DoF and fall-off to the background also add to this effect of being 'in your face' Very effective. However, the left side of the shot just doesn't work for me, with the square and pencil - they lead my eye out of the scene - particularly the bright yellow and reds in the pencil and the line shape they form pointing away from the subject and off the page to the left.
This can be helped a whole lot by cropping the shot square, around the dog. The right hand two thirds of the image are strong enough and with a centered crop the dog is the real focus of the shot.
Now following convention, you should use rule of thirds, right ? Well the reason is that if you have a subject bang in the center of the frame it takes all the attention, is very arresting, static and generally dominates the composition. In this case - that is what is happening anyway. If you compose it in a square frame by cropping the left third - you'll get an even stronger, more arresting scene. The elements in it build to that effect, the composition will enhance that and I think it'll be stronger all around.
After doing that, you are still left with the piece of wood jutting in from the left - which does still clutter it a bit, but I think this crop would make for a much stronger image - try it and see how you like it! Then maybe try and re-create this sort of image, with just the green grass background and without the other elements - try the off center and very centered/ square compositions with those as well and see which you prefer.
great sharpness in the face. It's exactly where it needs to be! I just find the left side of the frame to be a bit distracting (the tool), but it's definately a cute shot! Don't really think of this as "indecision" but, Maybe you are thinking "should I play, or should I work?" Good job :)
Normally I would make some obnoxous comment about the stuff in the foreground being too distracting but since I have a dog that gets really interested in tennis balls when I have a project going on -- I total know this picture. (of course the blurry stuff is distracting -- a simpler set up with a bit less green would have had me focus on that pleading face even more!) Hopefully you've mentioned the dog's name and breed in your notes. Thanks for the smile.
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