Resting

Neal, photographically this is a strong composition, with "in your face" impact. As B/W, not so much. Ideally, there should be tonal balance. You have way too much white and very little beyond mid-tone gray. I would play with tones on this some if it were mine. I would also consider whether this were better off in color.

I like the in your face feeling of the image. I would like it better in most of the foreground was cropped, maybe clear back to the ripples.

Very cool image, and that eye contact is awesome. I agree with Richard and think cropping some from the bottom will give this more impact.

Agree with the others. There is too much detail-less foreground.

Hi Neal,

I like your overall composition and the texture in the skin of the hippo is just great. And, the reflection adds to the image as well. I actually like the B&W conversion here - especially how it works in the top half of the frame - there's a nice tonal range there. I have no problem at all with using negative space in an image, but in this case the brightness of the bottom half of the frame and the complete lack of detail there makes the bottom half of the frame look as this region is simply blow-out (I'm not saying it is, but it has that APPEARANCE). So even tho I like the existing positioning of the hippo in the frame, I still think in this case cropping off a significant chunk of the foreground would increase the appeal of the image (at least to me!). Personally I'd cut it just below the horizontal ripples (cutting out the ripple closest to the bottom of the frame).

Cheers...thanks for sharing this...

Brad

Thanks for you comments. I am reposting the image, this time I have used a 1:1 ratio and cut off most off the white area below.
I think this works better.