Curiosity

Hi Terry, let me be the first here to welcome you and to congratulate you on your recent retirement. This "perp" looks guilty to me, the bush tail and beady eyes give him away, about to make an escape. But seriously, this is a sweet image. Processing looks pretty good too. Love the lichen on the tree, the posture and the background. If I were printing this photo I might use a healing brush to remove the bit of greenery in the upper left corner. A lot of techy types here, so sharing with us the equipment and settings used is always helpful in the critique process. Hopefully you will feel inspired to view some of the other photographs posted and share an opinion too.

Hi Terry ...congrats on completing your service. Well said..and I liked the statement on photographing the beauty of nature. This is a beautiful frame, and am a fan of cross and back lighting. Looks like a crown on its head ...and the background is fine, and may be the highlights can be toned down a small bit. Hope to see more images from you.

Balan Vinod

Welcome Terry, you started off with a fine photo of one of my favorite group of animals, the squirrels. Nice exposure, good pose, the highlights are just a bit bright. As previously mentioned the tech info is helpful to see. Thanks for sharing.

Welcome Terry! With wildlife, the subject has to cooperate and here he gave you a great pose. I especially like how the head is framed by the bushy tail, and that your depth of field kept the tail in focus. Also his leaning away from the tree and outstretched arms help make for dynamic diagonals, too. A larger size posting, which is an option when you first upload would give us a better idea of detail quality. I second the suggestion to include shooting stats. Here it feels like the eye and nose could be slightly soft, so a slight selective increase in sharpening would make a difference.

Terry, what a great start to your new photography life!. The squirrel is in a really nice position and I love the colors of the background. My only suggestion might be to tone down some of the white highlights as they tend to pull my eyes away from the squirrel.

Thank you all for the warm welcome!

Welcome, Terry, to NPN! Like you, I, too, want to get away from blood and gore to nature photography - I am a surgeon!
Regarding your image, I'd like to second the opinions of others about including technical details, a larger photo, toning down the brightness of the bg, and selectively sharpening the face.

Hi Terry,

Welcome to the NPN Wildlife Gallery - always nice to have new folks on-board and especially when they cross-over from a different photographic genre (and bring a different perspective to the discussion).

This is a great first post. Compositionally this one works very well for me - I really like how you've positioned the subject (and its "perch") in the frame and that head and tail are in the perfect spot in the frame (at least to my eye). I do find the bright (blown-out?) areas down in the conifer needles fairly distracting and for me they do detract from the image.

One final thing: While it is totally optional, I think if you give us more information about the shooting conditions (including some basic information about camera, lens, aperture, shutter speed, etc.) the quality of feedback we can give you will go up - simply because we'll have more to work with...

Cheers...and I'm already looking forward to future posts from you...

Brad