this little guy is on a mission to half eat every nut in my yard

[jamn4ex]

[RockNGoalStar]

Shoot him then!

Nice capture though. I like the way the wall with the trail of half-eaten nuts leads us into the image. It tells the story of this little pest! The tree-rat looks nice and sharp and I love the DoF

[Geoff F]

I think I would tone down the bright areas in the background and consider a slight crop of the top and left edge.

The trail of nuts from the bottom right corner leads nicely to the squirrel, as Tommy mentioned, but there is just distraction to the left of the chief subject.

The squirrel is well captured and with plenty of expression.

[Goldcoastgolfer]

I wonder what the squirrel looks like up close and personal. You've got the whole halo effect going on there - I reckon a tight crop around the squirrel might yield a great shot as well without losing the context.

[JPS]

Hi James,
nice shoot.
IMHO the picture requires a slight crop, so as to reposition the squirrels face directly on one of the 'lines', using the rule of thirds.

[jamn4ex]

Thank you Tommy, Geof, Malcom & John . I have attempted to apply all your suggestions and came up with this, thanks again and let me know what you think.

[RockNGoalStar]

I prefer the new crop. I think the picture could also benefit from added contrast and some sharpening...

I hope you don't mind, but I had a little play about using Jiro's high Contrast Dodge and Burn Technique but reduced the opacity to about 50%. I added a slight vignette and sharpened it with USM. I also removed one or two of the slightly distracting lighter areas in the background.

See what you think...

[Geoff F]

I've just had a quick play around with the crop version using a different but fairly simple technique.



I drew a selection around the squirrel and foreground (feathered the edge) and applied a little Unsharp Mask to avoid sharpening the background. Cloned over the bright background spots.

Used a bit of LCE (Unsharp Mask at 20-30-0) on a layer then added a Reveal All Mask and edited the mask to remove the effect from the background. Finally a tweak with Curves as an Adjustment Layer and once again edited the mask to reduce the effect on the background.

But this is just one of many ways to apply a little extra enhancement.

[jamn4ex]

Thanks Tommy and Geoff , your post production is a bit above my head. Still I should have thought to clone out the bright spots.

[RockNGoalStar]

Np James.

What PP software are you using?

Cheers.

[jamn4ex]

I have elements 9, but little understanding of it lol.

[Geoff F]

That should be sufficient for most editing needs including working with selections, layers and masks, etc.

It is a bit of a steep learning curve though.

You may find these articles useful; but they are aimed at a reasonably competent level so you may struggle a bit at first.

http://www.ronbigelow.com/template_images/header_02.png

Have you read the CinC tutorials? If not, I would start with them.

[jamn4ex]

Thanks Geoff I get kinda scared with the layers, but I am wanting to learn some ( I like to shoot birds but keep blowing out the sky) so I could maybe fix by shooting a seperate sky

[RockNGoalStar]

Layers are your friends James!

You can add as many or as few different (adjustment) layers to your original image to enhance it, without ruining the original. And if you don't like the effect of a particular layer, or want to mute its effect somewhat, or you only want it to affect a certain part of your image then you can do that too.