The Story Behind the Photo: Squirrel Up Close

The Photo Story

Someone is feeding the Squirrels at Sheldon Marsh Nature Preserve in Northwest Ohio. Walking along the approximately 1 mile long trail to Lake Erie, at least 7 squirrels approached me on the path for a hand out. I felt bad not having anything to give them as they were expecting something.

Squirrel Up Close

I was carrying my 500mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter so I could not take photos of them when they were really close. I did capture a photo of this squirrel in the woods along the trail.

I think the shallow depth of field really helps his face to pop in the photo. The young foliage in the front also adds to the photo. I had to raise the ISO to 800 to get a high enough shutter speed to account for movement.

Squirrel Photo Details

Camera: Canon 5d Mark iii
Lens: Canon 500mm f/4 with 1.4x teleconverter
Focal Length: 700mm
ISO: 800
Aperture: f/6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500 second
Exposure Compensation: +1/3
Lighting: Heavy Clouds

Squirrel Photo Post Processing

Cropped the photograph in Lightroom 5
Used Google Viveza 2 to selectively lighten and darken portions the photo.
Added Detail, Saturation, and contrast to the image using the Detail Extractor Filter in Color Efex Pro 4.
Used Topaz DeNoise and a Layer Mask in Photoshop CC to selectively remove the noise from the photo.
Selectively sharpened the image using the Unsharp filter and a layer mask in Photoshop CC

Written by Martin Belan

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