He looks so sad. Makes me want to cry. I can almost see his tears. Don't know how but this screams "emotions". Maybe a donkey ? Don't know but it gets to me. Great 9 and a high 9 at that. based on the emotions. PTL
Is it a horse? I keep trying to figure out what kind of animal. I wonder if a tighter crop wouldn't have helped this some. May have been a good B and W choice as well. DPz
I think that the lighting conditions under which you were shooting haven't done you any favours here... the area around the eye, which is in focus and so should be the centre of attention, is very dark compared with the rest of the image, which is out of focus. Maybe cropping in tighter and then tweaking brightness/contrast would have helped (depending on how many pixels you had to play with, of course)?