Snowy Whiskers.

Delightful!
Love the ears, bright eyes, and snowy whiskers.
Great stump and moss, and nice BG.
Sandy

Hi Phil,

There's a lot to like about this shot - great depth-of-field (I especially like that the "perch" is so sharp), nice setting, good colour, very good separation from the background, cute subject posing nicely, the nice "extra" provided by the snow on the whiskers, etc. Very well done overall. I do have ONE small nit, and it's to do with the perch: while visually appealing, it appears almost too "massive" and dominant in the frame to me (like the image is about the perch as much as it is about the squirrel). Personally, I think I'd crop about 20% off the bottom of the frame to reduce the overall "dominance" of the perch - I'd probably make the crop about the place where the left-most broken branch intersects with the main portion of the stump. I acknowledge that most of those visible hairs on the tail would be lost by this crop, but to me they're not critical to the success of the image. Just my 2 cents worth and I realize I'm being quite picky here - but such a strong shot merits nit-pickiness!

Cheers...thanks for sharing this...

Brad

This species of squirrel is more photogenic than the eastern grey for sure.... I love the snow and the act of eating. Brad makes a good point about the size of the perch (which I think could use a slight curves adjustment to bump up the contrast) but you have to weigh that against the inclusion of the tail (which isn't terribly noticeable in the image but does play a role.

I also think you could have used a little more DOF as the closest portion of the stump (the knob with no moss on the left side) is slightly OOF. Given your wide open aperture and low ISO you could have shot this at f/8 and had a little more DOF. Thanks for sharing

Very nice, well done.

Beautiful job. I love the quality of his fur and whiskers against the darker background. Color and light are pleasing. Without reading Brad's commentary, my first reaction was the only thing I would like to change is the amount of frame devoted to the stump. Its textures and colors are great, but the volume tends to detract just a little, IMO. Good posting!

Great background and I like the bit of snow on the whiskers. Nice color as well.

Cuteness alert all over , excellent

Hi Phil, certainly loosing some off the bottom of the image wouldn't hurt and would also remove the two white patches flanking the stump at the foot. Not knowing if this is FF I would be tempted to then have a fraction more above. The stump really dominates because of the size and content compared to the delicate detailing of the Red, but it certainly has character. The darker 'halo' around the squirrel also helps to define the whiskers and coat.

As my friend Harshad said, cute alert.

TFS
Steve

I really like the ears and the flying snow. You could tone down the perch a little to emphasize the squirrel more.