Out on a Limb

I came out of the closet some time ago and admitted to liking squirrels too. They sure are full of life and always doing something. Nice work getting all of him nicely framed up, including the tail. The tree trunk is good and basic and doesn't compete with the subject. My only nit I guess is that I would prefer a bit more dof, f9? The tail, portions of the body and feet could be a bit sharper and a smaller aperture would have taken care of that I think. Oh a final idea, you could easily fake this and rotate the whole thing 90 degrees cw for a vertical if you wanted to hang it that way.

Hey Jerry,

Someone has to tell Gary that snow on the bottom of a bough is a dead-giveaway for a rotated shot (unless it was shot in the southern hemisphere, of course! ).

While I don't find this pose as appealing as your last squirrel post, this is interesting in itself. The snow on top of the bough seems a bit too grey, but that's something easily fixed in post-processing. This one also seems soft and I don't think it's a DoF issue (as I can't really find anything in the frame that's really sharp). When you say this one was shot at 560mm, I'm assuming that means you used the built-in TC? While I haven't done extensive testing on this lens, I can say that I've NEVER found a lens/TC combo where you get maximum sharpness when the lens is shot wide open (and f5.6 would be wide open if the TC was in use). In most cases you need to stop down at least one stop (so, in this case to f8) to approach max sharpness (sorry for the long comment if you already knew this).

Back to squirrels: after completing my MSc I almost did a PhD on squirrel behaviour, expanding on some of the spacing work (interpecific territoriality - which is found with some squirrels) I had done on birds. Amazingly diverse behaviour - I once saw a red squirrel jump out of a tree and land square on the back of a Junco, kill it by biting it once in the neck, and proceed to pluck and eat it. At that point I knew they were cool critters!

Cheers...

Brad

Brad,

Thanks for the constructive comments. I had the teleconverter engaged and the aperture was wide open at f5.6. I should have stopped down for better sharpness, but I sometimes forget.

That was one radical squirrel you witnessed. Good thing squirrels are small, or we might have to be careful not to tick them off when we photograph them.

You were right about the snow. I posted a reworked image. Hope the snow looks a little better. It's interesting how you don't see certain things until they are pointed out. That's the great thing about this forum. Thanks again.

"Someone has to tell Gary that snow on the bottom of a bough is a dead-giveaway for a rotated shot (unless it was shot in the southern hemisphere, of course!)."

Brad, I think a 90 degree rotation would put the snow on the side of the tree with the little critter looking down/vertically? Here in the foothills with our crazy wind (gusting to 100 km/hr today) it isn't unusual to see the west side of a tree plastered with snow. I'm just kidding of course anyway, but thought it was interesting that you might actually be able to pull this off.