Samantha

A picture of the wife ageing horse Sam, she still has some winter coat.

I'm not to sure on the crop of this picture so any thoughts would be great, thanks.

Nice photo Ken - the only thing I'd suggest is editing out the pink-ish light bulb that seems to be protruding from poor Sam's side

Hey Azz, your right I didn't notice it or give it a thought. It's actually a red feeding bucket in the field behind her, but the 85L f1.2, does such a good job of blurring the BG

Although it's great colour and a lovely horse, I think the depth of field is too shallow and makes the horse too isolated. One step to the left would have hidden the pink, and the horse, IMHO, needs to be in focus at least to the body, showing the lovely chestnut colours with it's environment less blurred. It's in a pleasant field and we sort of need to see that either in focus or more recognisable. The trees and grey blobs to the left over shoulder are distracting and unnatural. That is a very expensive and fantastic lens, great on some human portraits but needs careful use. Just my view of course.

Hi BC

Thanks for taking the time and the detailed critique, You've made me think about this more and your right, I think I know where I went wrong on the excessive shallow DOF.
I kept reviewing the shots on the little screen at the back of the camera and on the mk3 the screen is only low resolution this means you don't tend to notice that the back end of the horse is out of focus by quite so much.

I too would like to have seen more of the horse's body in sharp focus. The only immediate solution would be a tight crop on just the head. That sort of defeats the purpose of using the extremely shallow depth of field lens. With the bulk of the background behind the horse's head being sky a different shooting angle might have been more appropriate. I don't know the circumstances.

lovely shot!

Looks very noble

Bob I really like that crop, if you don't mind I think I'll use it on the full resolution and do a print.

Thanks Dave.

If you want it just as I edited it add a slight vignette and do some sharpening on just the horse. I also added an 8 pixel black border to the shot. These are all part of my normal processing routine.

Lovely shot, I didn't notice the pink blob straight away, don't mind it either. I think soemtimes it's the imperfections in photo's that make them interesting.