Red Squirrel in Snow

Just got back from a weekend in yorkshire to photograph red squirrels. I was very pleasantly surprised to find snow still around.

As ever all C&C warmly welcomed

Poor thing looks chilled to the bone. Great stuff Phil. Our senior citizens' conservation group is at Formby Point this coming Friday, we're burying a load of Christmas trees to aid sand dune stabilisation I'll keep my eyes open for some reds, although the population has plummeted over the last few years they are supposed to be on the increase again thankfully.

Works for me, love the little hands, Phil

Andy...

Cracking image Phil, bet he's got frosty nuts!

Nick.

Looks like I missed out there Phil Looks like a cold one though

Bob

Phil it looks great from where i'm sitting

Keith.

JR

Hi Phil, the rather wet and bedraggled fur adds to conveying the cold, snowy scene and a like the horizontal ridge which gives a 'layering' effect of the contents of the image.

Personally I'm not sure that +0.67 may have been right. I might have plussed it even more, so the subject is a little lighter, as you can always darken an image in specific areas, like the snow, providing you don't blow the whites. Whereas if you have to lighten an image you start to add unwanted noise in key areas as you know. However, I guess ultimately it all comes down to how you meter in these instances, as the camera can be easily fooled in these conditions.

I trust you bought some cheese for Gromit?

One of those shots where you could have gone really bright, almost highkey but having some detail in the ridge is nice. I see a slight reddish cast to the snow but no biggie! Nice one.

Nice shot Phil but as Neil points out there's a red band in the snow FG and then a big near white band below that, then the bottom edge is going dark again.

If you've done a masked adjustment at the bottom third of the frame you need to go and add feather to that mask, or soften the brush to zero, or both.

Other than that I think its a cracker

I just wondered, were those bands there originally? Very often I see snow banded like that where people have piled it up and some sort of dirt has got into it. Of course, you might want to change it whether it was there originally or not.

Great shot of the squirrel by the way!

David

Thanks for the comments everyone. Neil i have no idea how i did that, i set the neutral colour balance to the snow and didnt think i did anything to change that. But there it is ... David they are not so prominent in the TIFF and not visible in the RAW Steve good advice thanks, i have never photographed anything in the snow before so I dare say my technique could be honed. I varied my adjustment pushing as much i dare as i was terrified of blowing the snow too much ... i got braver later this was an early effort. I have a few more which i have now processed that think are better and / or differant and will post them over the next week or so.

As ever advice is appreciated