Red Squirrel

polymoog · Mar 5, 2009

Not an official exhibit at San Diego Zoo

But I have never got this close to one before ... C&C welcome ...

dcclark · Mar 5, 2009

Very cute (and you're lucky)!

The squirrel blends in a little with the branches (I suppose that's the idea, but photowise it's a bit unfortunate). You might try dodging a little on the squirrel, to make it show up a bit more. Alternately, a light vignette may put the focus on him.

Jeff Canes · Mar 5, 2009

i like it, makes me happy

polymoog · Mar 6, 2009

Jeff Canes said:
i like it, makes me happy

Thanks

dcclark said:
Very cute (and you're lucky)!

The squirrel blends in a little with the branches (I suppose that's the idea, but photowise it's a bit unfortunate). You might try dodging a little on the squirrel, to make it show up a bit more. Alternately, a light vignette may put the focus on him.

Yes you're right, I maybe should have cropped a bit off the bottom. What do you mean by dodging, and vignetting? Sorry, absence of photography knowledge

dcclark · Mar 7, 2009

Sorry, my terminology was overboard there. Here's what I meant:

Dodging (and its complementary idea, Burning) are photo modifications where you lighten or darken a specific part of a photo, to emphasize or de-emphasize it. Photoshop, Gimp, and most other decent photo editors have dodge and burn tools. You select the tool, select how much to lighten or darken, and paint over the part you want to change. (Here's a random example: dancing tree, in which I dodged the central tree to make it stand out more, instead of getting lost in the background). However, if you're new to postprocessing, perhaps you shouldn't start with these tools just yet!

Second, "vignette" is the name for that slight darkening that you get around the edges of photos sometimes. It appears when the edge of the lens starts to encroach on the photo (for example, if you're shooting at an ultrawide angle, or if you have too many filters on your lens). It's often used intentionally to give your photo a "vintage" appearance, and also to focus attention on the center of the photo. There are a lot of tutorials online about how do to this in Photoshop and Gimp -- google will be your friend.

Good luck!

polymoog · Mar 7, 2009

Thanks for the info

Vignetting - I get that on my 17-70 if at widest angle, so now at least I know the name for it ;-) I usually try to crop that out to be honest, but I can see what you mean about using it as a means of focusing.

Dodge and burn are not tools I've used before, I do use Photoshop but don't know all of the controls, so I'll have a go with them sometime. BTW I like your wavy tree example