Love it? Hate it? Make you look twice? Just trying to do something a little different.

Hi Preston,

I like it. It is rather different. Is it a turtle? THe exposure is quite nice, and I love the patterns and colors connected to it. However, there is something about the eye that bothers me. I think that I would prefer for it to be lower so that the roundness of the eye does not get cut off. This would lower the line around the mouth a bit, but I do not think it would hurt the image in any way...actually, it may enhance it as the curve of the mouth at the end would be more leaning into the corner.

James

I like it. I agree with moving the eye down in the frame just a hair though.

Is it a large crop or did it start out as macro? The point of focus seems to be on the mouth rather than the eye.

Thanks for the comments. This is a crop. When I was playing with the cropping I had to choose whether to make it a little looser which would have included more of the nice pattern around the eye, but it also would have included background. Above the eye fell out of focus very quickly and seemed more distracting than interesting, but I was mainly trying to include just the critter in the crop which is why I made it tighter. I've been playing around with a 'patterns in nature' series, so I went with the macro-type crop. I agree that the placement of the eye does make you want it to be more in the frame. Sigh.

I'll ID the critter later, just in case anyone else wants to hazard a guess. Turtle? I can see that, but, no, its not a turtle.

Oh, Jim, I agree with you about the focus. Full frame, 2.8 100mm Macro lens. Razor thin DOF. Unrestrained, roving critter.

I really like this, the textures and colors are lovely. I think we want the eye on the third mainly because of the standard shape of the frame - if more of the head/neck is available maybe you could try a panorama type frame that would allow a completely different sense of balance; the horizontal line of the mouth punctuated by the eye above it?

I'm guessing some sort of lizard.

Preston I love this image and I would leave it just as it is shown. Stunning and I would like to have a copy. I have this thing about judging an image. Do I want to visit it, live with it or dismiss it. Well, this is a live with it image. Thanks for sharing.
(PS, I know that judging PPA images that is not the criteria but that is different! Under those conditions, I would deepen the levels a bit.)

I'll have to go along withn the lizard ,I love the pattern and colors most unusual to see blue, around Ohio lol.