Does this work?

I was out early this morning at the local nature preserve mainly to photograph deer. This young buck came by and I grabbed this shot. Normally I'm photographing still deer so wasn't prepared for a moving deer although I doubt I could have done much anyway. This was ISO 1000, f/5.6, and 1/20th SS. While I didn't plan it, I was a bit intrigued by the motion blur here. It has good points and bad points but I need advice from others before working on it a bit. What do you think? And thanks for any suggestions.

I like it a lot. It has a very abstract, painterly look to it, with a nice sense of motion thrown in. It totally works for me.

I once did a similar photo of a deer in Yosemite Valley. All my settings were slow preparing to shoot something else and this coyote appeared and was moving. I panned the coyote and it created a blurred background much like yours and is still one of my best animal shots. For a slow speed you got the eye and antlers fairly clear and that combined with the background make the photo work well.

Thanks for the input guys. I think I'll do a few minor tweaks (not big into major changes) and run it up the flagpole in the Wildlife Gallery.

Peter,

Absolutely works for me! It works because you've got the perfect "opening" where the buck's head ends up and as mentioned, the antlers and head are sufficiently sharp. Great catch!

My suggestion, and only if you're thinking about doing something with this other than posting on NPN... ;-) would be to tweak the color. The buck and image in general has a bit of magenta in it. I would expect the deer to be more brown. But no biggie, the motion effect is what this image is about.

Lon

I like the dynamic nature of this one, Peter. I agree with Lon regarding the slight magenta cast. Otherwise, this really works.

--P