Ok, here's my first non-avian image for critique - an American Alligator swimming towards her young at St Marks NWR in Florida. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the reflection & that most of her body was above water, but would like your opinions. I cropped very wide to accentuate the length, but not sure if that's best, either.
Shooting Mode Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/640
Av( Aperture Value ) 5.6
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
AE lock ON
Exposure Compensation +1
ISO Speed 1250
Focal Length 400.0 mm
Ian, That is a good size gator. Great too see a wild one in such a nice colorful reflection. I like the diagonal and the fact you went for the long view.
What I would have suggested here is to get the gator not swimming into the brighter part of the reflections. Swimming out of it would be OK but what I find here is that the bright reflection obscures the head and draws attention from it.
Given similar circumstances, I always try to get a more or less uniform look to the water or at least have the brighter parts of the water aft of the head.
I agree with the above comments. Because the human eye is automatically attracted the the lightest area of an image, the head seems to get a little lost in the lightness.
I also like seeing the entire length of the gator. I like the S curves of the tail & disturbed water behind the gator. The BG is beautiful the ripples & the colors.
TFS
Robert, Peter, & Andrew - thank you all for your nice comments and thank you for helping me understand what was off about this image. Sometimes it's hard to see it for yourself and I'll try to keep the REFL more uniform. I looked at my sequence again and have some better "water" in some of the shots, but this is the only one with her whole body above the water, which in my experience, is pretty unusual for alligators.