Meet Jessica...

[esteah]

Jessica is a tame hippo that lives with a family in South Africa. Read more about Jessica here... http://jessicahippo.com/

[Donald]

A tame hippo! Now there's something different. My regards to Jessica.

Andre - The top half of the image is wonderful, because it's perfectly in focus and you have handled the challenging lighting very well. The detail on the skin is wonderful But the bottom half; i.e. her nose area, isn't so good.

I see you shot it at 46mm focal length, at 1/80@ f5.6 at ISO100. I wonder if an adjustment to get the aperture value much lower to get a much greater depth of field would have helped? It is is also very dark compared to the rest of the image. I am sure this is how it was at the time. But again, I wonder if some post-processing work to an in-focus area such as that would help lift the image?

[esteah]

Thanks Donald. The intent was to focus on the eye and I didn't have a lot of time to think about depth of field. Jessica was also constantly on the move and for this shot, she was only out of the water, and still, for a few seconds. She was so close - the owners allowed the kids to feed and pet her - it was amazing...

[MVW22]

That is amazing! I've never heard of a tame hippo! .....Not to mention kids feeding one.... That is an amazing story about her too. I still don't think keeping one as a pet is the right thing to do (for both the owner's safety and the hippo). You never know when she could act like the animal she is. Hippos are notoriously aggressive... And given their size, it wouldn't take much aggression to hurt someone.
That being said, I like photo. You nailed the focus on the eyes. Nicely done.