Your best wildlife shots

It's time for another off-contest solicitation; we haven't had one since your Food shots last month.

As I was shoveling my driveway earlier this month, I was thinking about the weather adage about March, "In like a lion, out like a lamb." Turns out it really has nothing to do with weather, but concerns the positions of the constellations Leo (the lion) and Aries (the ram) at the beginning and end of the month. Also, there were some good zebra shots in the B&W contest, and POTW Caitlin Smith had a nice close-up of a camel.

So how about sending me your best wildlife shots? No pets, please. Ideally, I'd prefer wildlife unencumbered by fences or cages, but I'll take farm and zoo animals. I expect birds to be a popular subject.

Since I like to display these photos in a full-screen gallery, I prefer 1024 px wide for horizontals, 800 px for verticals. Full-res is fine; I have an Action set up in Photoshop that reduces it to 72 dpi.

Also, let's limit it to no more than 3 shots per person, ok?

Really examine your photos for quality and composition. It's easy to just point your camera and click, but I'm not looking for snapshots. We've all seen enough good photography posted here in the past 7 months to understand that the elements of subject, composition, lighting, context, focus, lack of clutter, color, texture, proportion, and more all come into play to create a great photo.

As longtime Globe photographer Bill Brett used to tell me, "I don't take a photograph; I make a photograph."

So let's see your wildlife creations. As always, email them to raw@boston.com.