Mare & Foal

[bloveless]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29792365@N04/2974877156/

Thanks for your help! Here's the metadata for what it's worth:

Camera: Nikon D700
Exposure: 1/8000 sec
Aperture: f/1.6
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV

Photometric Interpretation: 2
Orientation: Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution: 300 dpi
Y-Resolution: 300 dpi
Software: Ver.1.00
Date and Time: 2008:09:20 10:40:35
Exposure Program: Manual
Date and Time (Original): 2008:09:20 10:40:35
Date and Time (Digitized): 2008:09:20 10:40:35
Maximum Lens Aperture: 1/1
Metering Mode: Pattern
Sub-Second Time: 47
Sub-Second Time (Original): 47
Sub-Second Time (Digitized): 47
Color Space: sRGB
Sensing Method: One-chip colour area sensor
Exposure Mode: Manual
White Balance: Manual
Digital Zoom Ratio: 1/1
Focal Length In 35mm Film: 50
Coded Character Set: %G
Special Instructions: pvAI5mL1Soiu/uwcZso/JQ
Image Width: 1982 pixels
Image Height: 1321 pixels

[Ben H]

That's a really nice pic, and I like the composition.

The vignetting is a bit severe in the corners, I'd back that off and give it a larger but gentler feel. In post-processing, I'd probably dodge/burn the horses, and bring down the brightness of the fence in the background, which is a little distracting.

I might even blur the background some more.

But a decent picture, I think!

[Yisehaq]

I like the image but not the vignetting.
I thought f/1.6 is has a very shallow DOF. But in this case doesn't prove to be so. Any explanation?
Would a flash have helped on the horses?

[Travis]

in addition to above, I would reposition this shot a little more camera left to thin out the horses ass which is predominant center frame

[bloveless]

It was a fairly bright day, and the sun was behind me, so I don't think a flash would've helped. Anyway, I was on a high end race horse stud farm owned by a friend's father. I didn't want to use a flash because I didn't want to spook the horses. As for the depth of field, I shot at f1.6 because I wanted the horses to stand out from the background. They were far enough away from me that I didn't get as much background blurring as I would've liked. I think the image would've worked out better if I had been closer. There was a fence between me and the horses -- again because I didn't want to disturb them too much.

[bloveless]

As to positioning the shot more camera left, I agree with your comment. I hadn't actually noticed that. The image has been cropped somewhat anyway. There were lots of other horses to the left and to the right of these. I cropped the image to keep them from distracting from these two. I'm going to look at the master image again to see if I could have cropped it differently to avoid the horse's ass aspect. I'm going to do a little dodge/burn work now too. Thanks to everyone for your comments -- I agree with them all.