White-tail bucks

[John Mack]

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 8/3/21 at 9:13AM. Image processed in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Hand held, Small crop.

Canon 1DX MarkIII
Canon 500 f/4 IS USM
ISO 4000
5.6
1/500sec

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello John,

I opened this thumbnail with a degree of excitement, expecting to see some cool interaction between the subjects. Must admit I was a bit disappointed with the grooming pose, for me not working very well because one buck's face is partially obscured. Wondering if you might have more from this sighting.
Love the buck on the LHS of the frame, his proud pose, some 'battle scars' on its face, gorgeous rack. The bright area on the RHS buck's back catches the eye a bit. Colours look good overall, nice background, plants in the FG a bit much but nothing you can do about that. I would take some off at the top for better proportion.
I think I know why you liked this, content points to behaviour. One might perceive a kind of tenderness, or affection between the two, yet I am inclined to believe this is rather daily grooming and/or submissive behaviour.
An interesting frame John, and like I said above from the aesthetic POV it does not grab me, but since I am passionate about wildlife and curious about behaviour I still enjoyed viewing - thank you so much for sharing

Kind regards,

[Jonathan Ashton]

This was August - bet they aren't so friendly in October! I like the behavioural aspect and if they didn't pose ideally well you still got the behaviour and it is well processed too. I would have taken it but would have inevitably waited for the audience to say, " nice but..."

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi John, firstly I think a landscape format would have been better, as presented it's just too tight on the sides. In addition, as you are so close, you needed more DoF, the nose is soft and when you are this tight, it all needs to be sharp. I agree with Gabriela, it's needs more separation and for me, the buck doing the work is the one that needs to be focused on and ideally with the tongue visible. It's like taking a shot of a lion licking its paw, you want the shot just at the end of the lick to emphasis the behaviour. Colour & PP is getting better, but still more that can be done within the basic steps.

TFS
Steve

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi John ... again a tricky or " marmite " shot in my book .
As presented I think the additional buck is not helping IMHO , he is just there .... facing away and being partially hidden .
Not knowing how the scene was in total ... would hope you have more of them with both faces visible .
Sharpness and fine details looking nice ... tones are looking as well overall . Personally I might try to invest a little more time into the color grading i.e. driving the colors more apart ( even within the various colors) ... just my 2 cents .

TFS Andreas