Hi Yves. I like the poses of the deer and the sharpness but the contrast between the deer and the bright BG is not working for me. In my repost of your image, I did a major adjustment with the Shadow/Highlight filter in Photoshop CS3. The best thing however would have been if the image had been captured in much lower contrasting light such as early morning, late evening or overcast skies;)
I understand what Dan was trying to achieve by lessening the difference between the deer in shadow and the bright BG and true, less strong light is best, but I think you handled the contrast difference well as the deer are large in the frame and the two trees help to shield them from the harsher light in the BG.
I tried some selections on the BG and the FG leaves and then copied those to a layer and changed the blending mode to Multiply. You might want to investigate that. Thanks for posting.
Yves,
I like the deer. Both are standing alert and they cover most of the background. Two tree trunks are prominent in the background and they also cover up the bright highlights as well and lead your eye into the image. You can tightly crop from the right till the stick that goes up till the top of the frame. That would also reduce the harshly lit areas. I think you did well. The foreground areas is shade looks good.
I understand Dan's view that we should strive to shoot in golden light. We strive to but it does't happen always. The same image would not have worked if you would have shot at 100mm, as the wider angle would have brought in more harshly lit areas. During my initial years, I had burnt my hands trying to capture environmental portrait with slide films in contrasty lighting.