Dead deer composition

[mikesieber]

Okay, here's the story.

I went out today (weather was terrible, the sky was like cigarette ash) with the intention of finding some wildlife at a local wildlife/lake park. Unfortunately, the park was closed.

I've been trying to work on composition, ie, rule of thirds and such. My intention was to try to shoot some birds or maybe some macro on the trails, but with the park being closed, I couldn't. I did, though, happen upon this unfortunate little guy/girl right near the park entrance, and figured, "I'm here, I have my camera, what the heck?"

Normally, I prefer my wildlife alive, but since this opportunity presented itself, I decided to see what I could do.

I didn't want to post the images right into the forum because they are, after all, of a rather gruesome nature. And if the mods think these are too graphic, then please delete this thread. I don't want to offend anyone.

Forgetting the subject matter, however, I would like a critique on the artistic nature, ie, composition, color and so on.

All were edited in Lightroom with adjustments for saturation and contrast being the main edits. I originally thought that these would be perfect for black & white, but I found that the subject blended too much into the background with B&W with nearly every shot I took.

Images were shot with a Nikon D70 and a Tamron 70-200 2.8 lens at 500 ISO (was very overcast) and varying focal lengths, aperture values and shutter speeds.

Dead wildlife - a set on Flickr

[sk66]

Of the ones taken, the B/W is the easiest/best because it tones down the "gore"....
Looking at the subject I think the ribcage is the most "defining" and photographic aspect.
Gore for the sake of it is seldom good...it needs to make a statement. The ribcage bones speaks of "death/mortality/nature/cycle of life" and has strong compositional elements (parallel lines).
As for the entire scene, add vultures etc, or some kind of "causal statement" (obviously killed just for the rack, highway traffic etc) would help.

[Nicole Hanna]

Yikes! Sad to see it, but I can see why you felt compelled to photograph it. I also prefer the black an white. There is something unnecessary about the sight of blood in the colored shots that immediately made me want to turn away, and not because the photo is making a statement, but because it's just gross. lol. The black and white one, however, really seemed to spark my interest the most. It was stark in color which seemed to further amplify the reality of death. Nice.

[mikesieber]

Thanks for the critiques! I'll play around with the color images to see if I can make them work in black & white.

The only thing that attracted me to color was the red/green compliments going on.

Now I feel compelled to go photograph some healthy, happy grazing cows.

[windrider86]

I'm willing to bet you might get more responses if you post one of your photos here for us.

[mikesieber]

Okay. Since the bw isn't quite as gory as the color, here it is.



Shutter 1/640
F 4.0
Focal length 98mm
ISO 500