\"The little guy is climbing to the top of the rock!\"
This is a baby turtle we received to care for. It\'s smaller than a 50 cent piece. I went to check on him and saw that he had climbed to the top of the psuedo-rock centerpiece. I was quite surprised. I did not realize turtles could be such dextrous climbers.
Anyways, I think this is a great shot. I liked the original before cropping in that it really captured the distances involved with the DOF. However, when reduced to 720pixels the turtle begins to lose the great detail.
And frankly, I am tired of being told by tards \"not in focus\". On shots that were in great focus with great detail but just do not reflect it at such small resolutions. So I entered a cropped version that I think still captures much of the layered effect via the shallow DOF while maintaining the presence and detail of the cute little guy.
Hopefully this entry will place well. This is one of the few that I\'ve really liked since I received my new camera and that won\'t be considered a DNMC (one advantage of free studies). We shall see. But I expect to at least see a 5+ for this entry. I\'d really like to see it place in the top 25%. I\'ve been in the bottom 5% for too long now...
- Saj
Going to guestimate a 5.7+ for this entry...
Statistics
Place: 227 out of 615 Avg (all users): 5.7672 Avg (commenters): 6.0000 Avg (participants): 5.6370 Avg (non-participants): 6.2093 Views since voting: 1577 Views during voting: 265 Votes: 189 Comments: 10 Favorites: 0
I gave this shot a 6 which indicates a solid shot.
The technicals: Focus and DOF are great. The sharpest focus is on his eyes, which is perfect. Composition is excellent. The lighting has a few issues with some reflections (not too big a deal though). The worst is on the rock in the lower right. You might have burned that down.
The feel: I do like the texture and detail of the turtle. We may lack a little "wow" here, but I think it's a nice intimate shot of an interesting animal.
The game: Your technicals were rewarded by only having 20 4- scores. The lack of 8-10 scores probably signified the "wow" factor...
I gave this a 10... but it doesnt appear that my vote counted... perhaps I didnt vote on enough images... my apologies... but regardless, I really like this shot!!!
Focus is nice and sharp. Depth of field is well used to isolate the subject from distracting components of the picture. If anything I would have blurred the stripe of sharp focus at the bottom of the 'V' in the rocks to the left of the turtle. It's a little bit distracting for me. Not bad, just a little. Or you could have gone with an even shallower depth of field. To me the key is the face of the turtle. Turtles don't have much to have an expression with, but this picture sure seems to speak of sheer determination.
The ISO 400 speed left you with a little more grain than I like to see. But, at a shutter speed of 1/60 it looks like you didn't have much choice.