Critique please

[terrybrooks]

Night garden Red Fox Vixen Pup, close up
Got rejected on "One or more technical issues"

[ricky336]

Hello Terry,

I'll give my opinion again here, though you may not agree with it.

I think the framing is still too tight, it's a bit too yellow/red - probably from the flash or outside light source, a bit more contrast, and some vibrance could be added - perhaps something like this:

[terrybrooks]

I agree with the yellow, not sure what's happened there, there isn't really a strong enough ambient light source to create a cast (small daylight LED for focus only) flash was used and no colour adjustment in post.

I have spent some time now and changed the auto curve to linear curve and made manual adjustments, very difficult to remove the yellow with introducing to much magenta so I've had to adjust the yellow highlights.
Also use some masked/selective clarity, boosted shadows, reduced sharpening (Fox was wet which had the effect of increasing the appearance of structure)
Removed the 1:1 crop to allow a buyer to crop where they choose to
The fox was 12-18 inches away from my face, couldn't move back as I'd have had reflection from the glass I was shooting through and wouldn't want the distortion of wide angle lens really, though in future I should be able to get the fox to be further away, having said that I did submit others which were not so tightly cropped but they were also rejected

Here's my new edit, to be fair I try not to edit much, but on this one I think it needed it, lazy probably as I have stacks of shots of this Vixen Fox Pup

[Nancy OShea]

Ask yourself:  Would I buy that image to use in a commercial project?

It's a shame the ears are cropped off.

[terrybrooks]

Yes and yes, however I was deliberately going for the tight crop hence the mealworm bait on the step right in front of me, I do have loads of others not so close up, this one simply gives an option to a buyer