I know that to most of the North American folk this Grey Suirrel (black morph) will be one of the most commonly photographed subjects around. To us Dutch guys the parks in your cities are a treat though, cause squirrels are not that common in the Netherlands! Had some fun times with these animals..The BG is another tree.
C & C are welcome,
Canon EOS 30D 1/25 f8 Manual
ISO 500
Canon 100-400 L IS USM f3.5-4.5
Focal Length 340mm
RAW
Handheld
Hey Krijn, love the pose you got on this little fellow! Overall, the image seems a bit cold to me. It almost has an overexposed feel to it. I would suggest to selectively darken the FG tree a bit and maybe add some contrast to the squirrel.
Happy birthday by the way!
- Jerry -
Thanks for your views and your happy birthday of course.
The squirrel here wasn't directly lit by any sunbeam, ergo the very very low shutterspeed. I did this on purpose, in parks there is often a very high contrast range between dark and lighter areas (due to intersperced trees that catch away the light and create shadow areas) that are really distracting in your shot (mostly noticable in the BG).
What I constantly did was trying to find a subject completely shaded and then try to keep the lens really really still cause especially with these dark subjects you don't have a lot of shutter to work with. As the subject, FG and BG were all shaded (apart from the little patch of chin and upperlip (?) which clearly show a yellowish backlight) in this shot I don't think the WB are all that off, but I think this is a highly subjective discussion.
Normally I try to remember the light at the moment of shooting and adjust the WB accordingly unless it already looks good in RAW. When I'm dealing with an obvious colorcast I get rid of it in RAW or PS, but I don't think that that is the case in this shot (it looked good on my 'calibrated' monitor).
As for your contrast remark, I will see what it looks like at home with a little more contrast. I am always careful with animals as dark as this one when it comes to contrast as you could lose detail in those areas and I thought the contrast looked good already. But I will give it a go anyway....
Hope you're doing well,
Cheers,
Krijn
Last edited by Krijn Trimbos; 10-10-2008 at 09:24 AM.
Hey Krijn, sounds like this is as good as it can get under those difficult circumstances! Yesterday I found out the hard way how difficult it is to get a good image with lots of details when I was out photographing mushrooms in the woods with hardly any direct light as you describe. Took about 30 pictures and only kept 1 (and I'm not even too happy about that one too).
Keep up the good work!
- Jerry -
Strike a pose!
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