Lizard taking in sun

[freehuey]

At Joshua Tree National Park. Best part of this photo is that the rock the lizard is on was pretty big, so this did not involve dropping to the ground

Camera: Nikon D5000
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO Speed: 200

I wish I could have taken another one with a wider aperture to make the animal pop out more (though I'm not a huge fan of backgrounds that a blurry beyond recognition just for the sake of making it blurry), but it ran away.
My main question is how to make the subject stand out more with the picture I have. Crop? other post production stuff?

[tingeliM]

I would probably crop it tighter. The huge rocks on the background are very distracting. Otherwise I think it's a very nice photo =)

[Visions]

Thats a fun shot! It is difficult to separate a dark lizard from the background - you could try using the burn tool to darken the rocks behind (which I think add to the picture, they are quite dramatic!) however the best way to have the lizard as the focal interest is to try to take the picture with the sky as the background or something quite plain. When the background is fussy (lots of detail) even if it is out of focus, thanks to depth of field, it will still compete with the subject in the foreground.
You could try making a selection of your lizard and his big rock and putting it onto a new canvas with a new sky pasted on it to see what I mean.
AJ