A watchful eye

Sorry to admit that I am not fond of the subject, but I sure do appreciate how good the photo is. The eye is beautiful, the water lovely.

Beautiful animal & beautiful shot.

It is easy to over sharpen wet subjects, but here I think you got it just right. I like the overall sense of liquid, the water's surface and on the gator. The eye is intriguing and everything looks nicely focused. Giving the intrinsic difficulty of composing a long narrow subject, I think the addition of the rippled reflections are an important element. Good work.

I have grown very fond of the Alligators down here in Louisiana. They get a bad reputation. They are not aggressive let crocodiles. They usually swim over check you out and swim away.

David, I haven't had a lot of opportunity to photograph these guys (only one actually), but found the comp challenging because fo their shape. I like how you portrayed him in this shot. My only suggestions are; I would be tempted to make this into a pano and I would loose the heavy black border and replace it with a thin border for web presentation.

Kurt,
Good suggestion about the pano. They are hard to compose being so long. I would like to include more of the body but there is so much wasted space. I went out and saw some more gators today. I tried working on vertical shots of the curve in their body and tail when they swim towards you.

Aggressive or not, crocodile or alligator...99% of the time it's human stupidity that leads to an attacks. I love the water effect here.

David, I REALLY like the pano re-work here! Very cool!!