Golden-mantled

Interesting ground squirrel on a great root/stump perch. Colors feel nice and rich. Regarding the background, I find the vertical reddish area above the tail to be somewhat distracting and I am drawn to what looks like a sharp edged artifact at 11 oclock of the off-side ear. Is that a faint ghost image from some earlier cloning? Careful use of cloning could successfully eliminate these elements, depending on your personal approach/philosophy to using clone.

Hi Clayton,

Nice pose and great perch. I find the composition a little too centred for my personal taste (I'd probably shift the ground squirrel a little to the right and slightly lower if it were my shot and go with a more traditional horizontal 3:2 aspect ratio). Kind of hard to offer much in the way of suggestions to background without knowing a little more about the shooting condtions and tech specs, etc (in particular, the focal length of the lens, aperture, etc.).

Cheers...thanks for sharing this...

Brad

Thanks for your suggestions Lon & Brad. You both make good points. The reddish streak was a OOF ponerosa pine. I got rid of that and the cloning artifact and cropped per Brads advice. Not too much because I think the knarly perch is one of the interesting parts of this photo. Thanks again.
Clayton

I think the advice of Lon and Brad served you well. Your re-post looks great.

The new crop works very well, Clayton! What a cute ittle fellow on a very interesting trunk.