A squirrel’s foot clings to a bird feeder. Notice how the top claw is hooked around the wire handle; that is what is doing most of the holding here. This is its rear foot. He is hanging upside down; the furry area behind the foot is eastern gray squirrel’s bushy tail. I had a clear shot at this cooperative squirrel. I wanted to capture something else about the squirrel other than the usual bushy tail or its head. I was struck but the very hand-like look of the rear feet. It was raining, which shows in the fur.
The light for this photograph was very challenging. It was a very gray winter day here. This feeder was in the shadow of a building, with the natural light behind the subject. I was shooting through window glass on top of all that. I used a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight flash with an alcohol bottle diffuser. I shot at an angle through the glass to avoid reflections. Despite my best efforts, it came out rather flat in lighting. I post-processed in Aperture pretty heavily to pull out the foot. You can see the trade-off in the blown-out white background. However, it’s off to the side so that it does not distract the eye; it matches the white background of the page to give it that “Eyewitness” look. Well, sort of. What it really needs is better light, but you get what you get some days.
The camera was the Nikon D90. The lens was the 70-300mm AF-S ED VR, which replaced the 70-300mm ED in my kit some time ago. 300mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/60 sync to the SB-600 strobe. The final image is cropped somewhat from the original.
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