Mountain Goat

[Rachel Hollander]

Taken in Glacier National Park a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately it was midday and the light was somewhat harsh.

Canon 50D
100-400 @150mm
1/1600
f5.0
ISO 200
Handheld

C&C welcome and appreciated. Thanks,

Rachel

[Hilary Hann]

Rachel, I like the thoughtful look on the goat's face but not so sure about the bright yellow flower, I know it was there but it is kind of distracting. I'm not sure whether you lightened the eye but if you did, I think it is too much as it looks almost milky (a bit like a dead animal's eye), so perhaps adding a little black back into it would help. I do like the light on the horns and the fact that you have lots of detail in the coat. I think the bokeh in the background is less than appealing, but not much you can do about that. (only having recently learnt about bokeh … thanks Artie … I'm still struggling with that aspect myself) Still, given the harsh lighting I'm amazed at the job you've done, well done. :)

[Robert Amoruso]

Hilary brought up some excellent points. I have experience that type of BG bokeh at those times of the day (heat waves perhaps). In any event, your biggest problem here is the light.

I would have good vertical thus eliminate BG and not clipped the horns, moved to eliminate flower and used a smaller aperture for more DOF.

[Julie Kenward]

Rachel, nice head angle on the goat. I also like the detail in the fur. One thing you might try in post-production (pp) is to pull the yellow out of the green grass - that is where the light is really showing how harsh it is. Sometimes if you reduce that yellow tint you can come up with a nicer BG. Another option is to try different colored filters in Photoshop and see if any of them makes the image look less harsh. Sometimes it works!

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Hilary, Robert and Jules for the comments and suggestions. I may play around with a little pp and see what I can do.

Thanks again,
Rachel