Sometimes it’s the subtleties in a photograph that make the difference. I love to photograph Bighorn Sheep and when this ram settled down into the grasses in front of me just outside Yellowstone National Park, I couldn’t resist firing off a long blast to capture this serene moment. After downloading the RAW images to my computer, I viewed a group of these images together. At first glance, they all looked pretty much the same, so I picked one of the last of several that I reviewed to finish. Although these two images look identical, they are not but I didn’t realize it at first since I’d been focused on checking for eye sharpness, something critical to a wildlife photograph. It struck me that something wasn’t quite right, that this image was different from some of the other images I’d reviewed. When I looked at the other images again, I realized the difference was the ram’s ear. In the first image, he has twitched his ear back, almost obscured by the curl of his horn. Images I’d taken seconds earlier showed his ear forward as in the second image. Generally, when an animal puts its ears back, it means they are focused on listening in whatever direction the ears point and it is often a signal of alarm or distress. I don’t know what might have caused this change in ear position but there were several people out photographing this band of sheep and some of the photographers weren’t respecting boundaries. After reviewing images again, I decided that I prefer the second image with the ram’s ear in full view for two reasons; first, the ear is identifiable as an ear; second, the ram does not appear stressed.