Groundhog
by Luke Ormand
Another interruption in my seal series. If any of you have been following my posts in the Avian gallery you'll know that I have been spending a lot of time at a former air base which is home to one of the largest areas of grasslands on Long Island. I've picked up a few new species of birds as well as getting my best shots of many species but it is also home to groundhogs, deer, fox and skunk (the latter species becoming quite rare on Long Island) and I was happy to find this groundhog who had seemingly just emerged from his/her den after a long winter. This is by far my best photo of this species which usually are only seen eating alongside the highway.
Nikon D300s 300 f/4 + 1.7X TC HH
f/8
1/1600s
ISO 500
-.67 EC
Cropped to about 70%, sharpened, cloned out a small grass above the head
- Luke
Comments
4 commentsCongrats on adding to your species list (and grabbing some "best of" shots too). I like the shot as presented - image detail is good and exposure looks pretty much spot on. Compositionally this works quite well for me, tho' I tend to agree with David that the image feels a bit tight on top. Ideally I think I'd like the image a little more without those out-of-focus grasses along the bottom edge of the frame, but it looks like it would have been extremely difficult to capture a shot here without grass imposing on the shot somehow!
Cheers...thanks for sharing this...
Brad