I feel that giving an image a sense of scale is important to give the viewer, who may never have seen a red squirrel “in the flesh”, an idea of how it fits into its natural habitat.

For this image I was attracted to the diagonal line formed from front right to back left by the Scots Pine trees. All I need was for a red squirrel to show up in good light and hey presto, I would have captured the image that I was after.

It took a while but on this day in early March this good-looking chap appeared and posted perfectly for a few seconds but that was long enough for me to capture this image.

You will see from this image that that there are a couple of fallen trees that dissect this image. These have fallen naturally but offer other photographic opportunities and this is what I meant when I said not to interfere with nature as it will provide plenty of photographic opportunities without me attempting to improve on it, all to often this will result in damage. I have seen some photographic hides that resemble a man-made obstacle course but for me I like to “keep it real”.