Porcupine's Nap

Hi Tony and welcome to NPN and the Fauna Gallery. This is a wonderful porcupine photo imho. Good job revealing the nose, no small feat on a creature that prefers to roll into a ball. The front lighting is good for showing detail in the dark coat and the sky reveals the halo of quills. Lovely exposure. For some reason I have never seen one of these guys in the wild, after half a century living in western Canada! Furthermore, their distribution map covers the entire country and the western half of the United States.

Welcome to NPN and especially to the wildlife gallery. I am sure you will find these forums valuable. You will also find it pays dividends to take an extra minute or two and offer feedback on some postings of others, too! It sharpens your eye the next time you are making an image and you may notice that those who participate by responding to other members will get more and more detailed feedback in return!

Getting a good image of an animal back-lighted in a tree is difficult and you managed to do quite well with the technical challenges. You managed to avoid blowing the bright sky while keeping a good exposure on the porky. Another challenge here is the myriad of branches, which unavoidably create a very busy setting. Choice of F4 allowed the further ones to go out of focus and in the foreground you found perspective to keep the near ones from crossing the facial area. I hope you stayed for several frames. I think this one would have been improved with a slightly different pose, perhaps a head tilt to show the face and especially the eyes. Inclusion of elements such as foot/claw detail will also enhance an image. Another thing I like about this capture is the nice sprinkling of snow on his back. Thanks for sharing a capture of an animal we seldom see posted. Again, welcome!

Welcome. Nice job on getting a clear, unobstructed view of the face. Too bad they're so camera shy. Detail looks good and I like the BG.

Thanks for the welcome everyone. Glad to be here.

Hi Tony and welcome to NPN This is a most interesting image to start off with. I canbnot add more to it than Gary and Lon have already said, so no need to repeat. I would only like to add that a bit more room at the bottom would have helped the overall comp . Looking forward to seeing you around the wildlife gallery.