I photographed this porcupine in Montana during one of my wildlife workshops. These animals are challenging because their faces and bodies are dark, and it's easy to lose detail especially between the dark eyes and the dark fur that surrounds them. If contrast is too great, the pictures will be disappointing. Contrast translates into lost detail. Therefore, you must have either low angled front lighting, like sunrise or sunset, with the sun at your back, or overcast conditions in which the diffused light means low contrast. That's what I had here. My settings were 1/500, f/5.0, and 400 ISO, and I used a 70-200mm telephoto. The immediate foreground is out of focus, and I don't like that, so I used the burn tool to darken the wood stump in an attempt to down play that area of the image.
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