Newt

Lucy, can you give us some additional info? What iso and what lens / focal length? I'm assuming you were shooting hand held. I like your choice of B&W and the basic composition. The echo of its position in the shadow is nice. I wish the longer stick wasn't there, but we have to deal with what we have. The newt looks on the soft side even in the larger view, but without the lens info its hard to say if it was even doable at 1/80th.

Hi Lucy,

I like the idea here - and think that it was likely a good idea to go down the B&W conversion road - but for me there's a few too many elements competing for my eye's attention. In particular, I find that light plant (and its shadows) to be a bit of an interference (I'd love to see a clean shadow of the newt on the bottom of the pond).

Cheers...

Brad

Thank you all for the great comments. Rick, I did shoot hand held, with a Tamron 70-300, focal length 130. Don't see iso on the Get Info panel. And yes Brad I agree there are a few too many elements. I like some of the foliage shadow but removed some of it, as well as that large stick. Here's a redo.

Repost is an improvement and it demonstrates nicely how finding the cleanest setting can better emphasize the wanted focal points.