Giraffe (amature alert)

I spent the last weekend at the Wild Animal park having a bit of fun.
I had 2 goals while I was there:
Primary goal: manual focus
Secondary goal: composition (this goal is way behind the first while I was there)

..about 270 photos later, I ended up with only a couple photos I liked (one here and one in another thread). I naturally have unsteady hands, so shooting manual seemed that much harder.

Please feel free to comment away. Harsh critisism is ok with me because I am here to learn
Photo taken on an XT/70-200f4 (I had to lighten up the image a little in photoshop)

nice shot good detail,for me less crop on top if cropped.

How cute I like..

Great job!

Interesting shot Gomer. You should try a longer exposure time to brighten your subject's face or, use "fill" flash to lighten it up a little against your bright background. With a lens this long you'd need an external flash as the built in flash would likely not work too well.

One other way is to open the file in PhotoShop (or another editing program) and use the "magic wand" tool to select the face* then adjust your levels there. You didn't indicate that image editing was permitted but I took the liberty of doing so to show you what I mean. I hope that you don't mind.

* I reselected the eyes as well and lightened them up further.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

I would like to post an altered copy of your pic, but you do not have image editing OK set in your profile.

Please let me know if it is ok to post.

Thanks I give you permission. I will change my profile to reflect this

My attempt at this pic.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

wow, that's pretty cool. nice one!

other than what's been mentioned, I'd prefer a verticle composition and not croping off the tips of it's horn.

he looks grumpy .. heh