Black cow stare down

Fair warning: posted in the Wildlife forum also. It's been a loooooong time since I've taken anything other than family snapshots with iPhone. I'm looking for any critiques or suggestions for improvement. This was also the first outing with a new 85mm 1.8 lens.

I did notice there's a distracting snippet of another eartag in the upper right corner that probably should be cloned/cropped out.

The main point for critique that I see is that the cow blends too well into the background. This is understandable because much of the background consists of similar black cows.

Not sure if it is my monitor, but the image looks a tad underexposed. I'm hardly an expert, but it might have been a good idea to shoot to the right and then pull it back in PP.

You might want to bring out the head and even add a faux catch light something like this. Except, of course, better.

I understand you did in post, but if I wanted to do that in camera, how would I have done it? Flash? Diffused or bounced? It was about 11:30 am when I took this and the cows were standing in the shade.

In real life I would not have had a flash ready for the moment so would have come away with about the same image you did.

A more prepared shooter would, I think, blitz #138 with a directly on-axis flash to get those eyes and flies in stark detail.

All those flies cancel out the "I'm so mean" attitude and replace it with "I'm so pathetic".

Alveric wrote in post #18073568
All those flies cancel out the "I'm so mean" attitude and replace it with "I'm so pathetic".

Or else "I don't sweat the small stuff but you are big enough to back off about a thousand yards."

AZGeorge wrote in post #18073565
In real life I would not have had a flash ready for the moment so would have come away with about the same image you did.

A more prepared shooter would, I think, blitz #138 with a directly on-axis flash to get those eyes and flies in stark detail.

I could have as I have a 580EX flash unit. But it didn't cross my mind to use it. I guess I should use it more and see what happens. I might even get a better photo.

I'd adjust the contrast and enhance the catch lights already there. The white spots posted in the eyes are just way to fake.

Just a thought....