Shaun Burke

A nature trip allows this photographer to see red

Andre w sa ys: This is a well-exposed image with good colour saturation, so it has

a lot of positive attributes. It is perfectly sharp too, and I love that catchlight in the squirrel’s eye: it really brings it to life. You got away with that 1/125 sec shutter speed, but if there had been the slightest movement from the squirrel’s head, you may well have risked blurring your subject. I’d always try to keep the shutter speed higher than that, although I note you were already on ISO 800.

The upright framing was the right choice, but I think there is too much space behind the squirrel and not enough in front. You just needed to centre the animal slightly to improve it. I’m also not too excited by the post it’s sitting on – nothing you could do about that, of course, but a better-looking post, maybe with some moss on, would have finished the set beautifully.

Shau n sa ys: My squirrel photo was taken from a hide in woods in

Yorkshire. I expected to maybe see one or two, but it was clearly a well established hide: from the first second the hide owner placed peanuts in the hidden feeders, the reds started to appear. At one point we counted six in front of us, and this is one of the images I was able to get.

I shot with a Canon EOS 7D Mk II and a 100-400mm lens. The exposure was 1/125 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 800.