Picking up a camera for the first time in what feels like forever, I was struggling a little to remember what all the controls to but it did come back quite fast. We were in Holland Park, exploring aspects of the soft and diffuse light characteristic of our present weather in London. I was trying to work with light and shadow on flowers using a macro lens, when Alex, one of the tutors from London Photographic, mentioned this squirrel had just hopped down from a feeder and was enjoying a nut, right beside us. I’ve rarely tried animal pix before but this guy just sat there, and let me up so close I had plenty of time to get him in focus. My light setting were wrong – he was underexposed – but I was able to fix that in PS. I prefer under-exposing in any case because I find it gives more flexibility in processing. I know squirrels are a bit of a photographic cliché, but I was still delighted by the way the camera caught the fine detail of his bushy tail and his almost-contemplative, classic squirrel stance.
