toucan cropping advice

[jaland]

Hi, I'm somewhat new to photography in general, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. I took this shot indoors at a local zoo in Colombia, SC; the sky in the background was actually a painted concrete wall so I tried to go for a short depth of field to hide that. I would especially appreciate any ideas on cropping the image. Also I used a Cannon 300D with 75-300 mm f/4.0-5.6 lens, somehow in data transfer I lost the exif data and can't remember what exposure or aperture I used. thanks
<a href="http://s266.photobucket.com/albums/ii259/wolf5389/?action=view&current=Toucan2600pixels.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii259/wolf5389/Toucan2600pixels.jpg" border="0" alt="toucan at riverbanks zoo"></a>

[wulf]

It is a shame that the toucan got a bit blurry in the process (maybe the shutter speed wasn't quite fast enough for the focal length?). Otherwise the attempt to blend in the wall would have looked really good.

Although it would be better if the toucan were sharper, I think I might still keep it, cropping to a square format (full height, with the toucan's eye on the imaginary vertical about 1/3 of the way in from the left). That would lose the dot floating near the left side on the full version - and it might also be worth removing the hint of greenery protruding on the bottom of the frame.

In fact, you could also do some work twisting the colours, present it in a "polaroid" frame and then the lack of sharpness will look like part of the cool vintage effect rather than detracting from the image :)

Wulf