Self critique

All too often I manage to take shots that are 'nearly' pictures. Or is that all the time? If truth be told I'm hardly ever 99% happy with any of my photos. There's always some flaw, however minor, that is all I see whenever I look at them.

At first glance I was happy with the shot below. The good points are the composition, the light (particularly the long shadows), the muted colour scheme, the guy's pose and the dog being on the point of leaping. But...

The niggles are a slightly too slow shutter speed giving motion blur where it's not wanted. This isn't apparent at the size the image is shown here, but when viewed larger it is. I can live with the blur in the throwing stick, but the dog is blurred a little too much. The throwing stick is also too close to the edge of the frame. It's only a midge's, but it's enough to niggle.

The most annoying flaw is the dog's pose. It's great that the front paws are off the ground giving a sense of movement and anticipation as it watches the ball, but they should be visible rather than implied, and if it's head was in profile, even if just the tip of its nose turned into view to the left, the picture would be far better. More definition of the dog's tail would have made it complete. To top off the annoyances is a hint of unsightly green flare. Flare can be good, but in this case it isn't.

So it's another 'nearly' shot.

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