What’s wrong with this picture?
I
like this picture of a two-toed sloth I captured a few years ago in
Costa Rica... except for the background. The fact that the animal
was in the tree meant at least some of the background was not go-
ing to be completely out of focus. That doesn’t bother me because sloths live
in trees and this is their environment.
The problem, though, is the highlights behind the sloth. They are distract-
ing because our eyes are drawn to the lightest part of a picture first, and then
our attention returns to those highlights again and again. That’s not how a
successful picture is supposed to work. Our attention should be focused on
the subject without other elements in the shot vying for attention. There was
no way to avoid the bright background at the time of shooting, so the only