The early squirrel gets the nut

Last winter I threw a few leftover nuts into my back yard and a few minutes later we had a visitor. He stuck around for a little while. Long enough for me to get a few good shots and even a short video or two.

Looking at the photo now the snow looks grey because our backyard was cast in a shadow from the house and the squirrel looks a little blurry and he doesn't stand out very well on the grey-ish background.

So I brought the picture into photoshop. The first thing I did was duplicate the background layer so that I have something to go back to in case I screw up. This was a lesson I learned the hard way.

I added an Unsharp Mask (but forgot to record the settings... doh!) and a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer (+38/+22 respectively) and surprisingly enough... that was it!

You can tell it was snowing at the time the picture was taken. I like the little specks of snow but I think this could be a great stock photo (had it been taken with a good camera) if I removed the flecks. So I took the handy dandy clone tool and...

 

Voila!