Wild outfit -- and moment. Nice capture. I see quite a thorough critique here, and I skimmed it. The suggestion about DOF is a good one. Photoshop tools can help fix that as well. :) Antonia
This is a tough shot to get from a number of perspectives. First, this is a fast moving sport! I rode bulls for a while and am certain that I owe my life to a rodeo clown. This sport moves fast and the difference between a good ride and getting bucked of is measured in milliseconds. The same goes for the photography...a great shot versus an OK shot is a matter of milliseconds.
OK..so the critique:
Nice action shot. Although I would prefer to see more of the bullfighter's face. Capturing the dust around the bull's hooves gives a nice sense of motion. This is accentuated by the position of the human subject.
The color on the clown's attire is striking. It adds some additional visual excitement.
The bulls is way under-exposed. This is a tough shot, though. You've got a lot of light, bright colors next to a really dark animal and about 1/25th of a second to figure out how you want to shoot this. I would prefer to see the bull's skin and face more well defined. You may have a great image on your monitor at home or on your camera LED, but on my monitor the bull is just a black mass. I had a similar shot of a cape buffalo a couple of years ago that just didn't come across well on the monitor. Looked great on the print but it just got "muddy" on the scan.
DOF is OK, but I would prefer to see it shallower. The cars and the fence are distracting as a background. If you had kicked your f-stop up toward the 11 or higher range, you might have been able to blur the background a bit more. This would even further isolate the subject and would have added to the sense of motion. Of course, I realize you would have had to sacrifice shutter speed but with this kind of light, you probably would have been OK. That's just a guess on my part.
It's a really good shot, don't get me wrong. These are just a few observations from my point of view. Most of these suggestions are ones that others have made to me on shots I've posted in the past. I'm just noticing some similarities between your technique and mine and offering you some options I found helpful in my own work.
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{K:30599} 7/27/2005
