Central Park Squirrel, critique wanted!

[Calzinger]

I took this some time ago with my 70-200 f/4L. I barely did any PP.

http://calzinger.net/_sitecontent/_cache/_photos/nyc_centralpark/960.640._MG_6768.jpg

Critique would be greatly appreciated!

[kster]

Nice shot. The green background is distracting to me, a tighter crop would help.

[Meaty0]

Hi Chris,

Does that 70-200 ever come off your camera? You sure get a lot of use out of it and have inspired me to use mine more.

I love these little critters, but I suppose New Yorkers think they're a pest. Your shot looks good to me, but kster is right, the bright green background could be cropped, i.e. remove about 1/3 of the left side of the photo.

Love your shots...reminds us of our travels to NYC.

[Calzinger]

So do you guys think I should crop out the left to basically center the squirrel? I usually don't crop against the original 3:2 ratio unless I'm printing, not to mention I'm not particularly a fan of center composition either unless there's a reason for it.

I thought the green background contributed a bit to the whole setting of the shot, maybe giving it more of that forest type feel to it. Nevertheless, I see what you guys mean about distracting. I'll play around with it a bit, thanks for the advice guys!

Meat, the 70-200 is basically all I have. It's basically on my lens all the time, but now that my cousin gave me his 50 f/1.8 II, I've been having fun with that too. I got plenty of use out of my 70-200 f/4L (15K actuations in 5 months) and I'm sure I'll get plenty more out of my 2.8L.

[tlc]

its definitely better than the dead one i saw of yours......;)

[Meaty0]

So do you guys think I should crop out the left to basically center the squirrel? I usually don't crop against the original 3:2 ratio unless I'm printing, not to mention I'm not particularly a fan of center composition either unless there's a reason for it.



Hmm. I see what you mean. If you crop out some of the green area, it changes it to a square format with the squirrel in the centre (Not right either somehow). Maybe you could select the green color in "Hue/Saturation" command and desaturate it a little?

[midnitejam]

Ever hear of triangle composition?

Place the tip of its tale in the upper left corner and allow its paws to almost touch the border edges. Such a crop might even place its eyes in the ROT upper right sweet spot. Drawback is that such a crop may not support the standard 3:2 ratio.

I squirrel hunt in the fall. I use a camera rather than a gun and I rather like your original without being cropped because it gives me more of a sense of being in the squirrel's element.

[JayKitty]

it looks like the background is a little blown. some quick cropping will do the trick.

[xepherys]

I suggest destaurating the green a bit as well. I think it's the brightness that draws my eyes away from the subject. I don't think this image deserves to be cropped at all, though. The framing is great! Also, I normally don't like animals looking at the camera, but in this case it works very well.

[98photo]

I like the framing as well. As Xepherys said, I would just tone down the green a bit.
Great squirrel!

[Calzinger]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I went to photoshop and cropped it again but maintained the w:h ratio. I tried to fix the "blown out" green, but I just did Auto-Levels in photoshop.

cropped
http://calzinger.net/_sitecontent/_cache/_photos/nyc_centralpark/960.640._MG_6768_2.jpg

cropped w/ bloom
http://calzinger.net/_sitecontent/_cache/_photos/nyc_centralpark/960.640._MG_6768_2_bloom.jpg

[Calzinger]

Here is another shot that I took. These are the only two shots I got.

uncropped
http://calzinger.net/_sitecontent/_cache/_photos/nyc_centralpark/250.166._MG_6769.jpg (http://calzinger.net/_sitecontent/_cache/_photos/nyc_centralpark/960.640._MG_6769.jpg)

with bloom
http://calzinger.net/_sitecontent/_cache/_photos/nyc_centralpark/250.166._MG_6769_bloom.jpg (http://calzinger.net/_sitecontent/_cache/_photos/nyc_centralpark/960.640._MG_6769_bloom.jpg)

[midnitejam]

I've just tried to outcrop a triangle composition while maintaining the aspect ratio and the present horizontal orientation and it didn't work. I should have tried it before I suggested it.

[Meaty0]

I like your cropped version much better now. Not so keen on the "bloom" one. That bloom you do seems to look better on your excellent "people" shots. (How do you do it? :-D )