Porcupine affection technique

The safest place for a mother porcupine to kiss its baby is on the nose! These animals instinctively know how dangerous their quills are, so in giving affection the deadly barbs are carefully avoided. I photographed this shot in Montana in late winter, and the snow in the background always bothered me a little because it's so light. Our eyes always go to the lightest part of a picture first, and then our attention returns again and again. That's not what you want. The attention should stay focused on the subject(s). On the positive side, the out of focus snow causes a separation between the animals and the background. I took this years ago with my medium format film camera, the Mamiay RZ 67, and with transparencies we didn't have the remarkable ability to manipulate individual areas of exposure. My settings were unrecorded, but based on how I used to shoot, they were probably 1/250, f/5.6, 100 ISO (Fujichrome Provia 100). With this camera, I always used a tripod.