Only Looking for Love
by SandyRichardsBrown
Poor little skunk.
Our rescue facility is full of injured skunks and orphaned babies. I'm hand-raising 3 tiny skunklets at the moment. The cat is jealous.
Skunks are largely nocturnal critters, and usually forage near their dens. However, this is mating season and the males search far and wide for a willing female.
Striped skunks move slowly, have poor eyesight, and climb badly. They also believe they have a fool-proof defense and are not very
cautious.
Sadly, skunk spray is not effective against automobiles.
Please drive carefully and avoid harming these exceptionally useful critters who predate mostly on gophers, rats, and mice.
D300s
18-200mm @ 190mm
Digital zoom: 1.5x
Subject dist: 7.9m
1/60 sec, f/8
Mode: Av
Metering: Spot
ISO: 250
White balance: Auto
Flash: Off
Hand-held
Comments
2 commentsThat said, I do like the opposing diagonals in this, first and foremost; i.e., the white center stripes on the road running in one diagonal direction, and the white stripes of the unfortunate skunk in the opposite direction, and yet the white lines in the tail are parallel to that center line.
Secondly, this is a rather ingenious composition, I think, in that while it is essentially B&W, it has a single red color accent that is nicely and exactly positioned in the lower right intersection of rule-of-thirds lines.
The acceptable depth of field at close to 200mm is quite good, I think, and the selection of shutter and aperture appear to have done the trick at ISO 250.
Finally, I think the black strike works quite well with this image.