The Frogman

Some behind the scenes of my efforts…

Thu, 05 Nov 2026 12:09:10 -0600

Walnumina and Her Walnut
Taking nice photos of squirrels is hard, y'all.
I have been at this for weeks. First, they didn’t like peanuts. I thought peanuts were classic squirrel chow. There was even a big cartoon squirrel on the bag. But I didn’t do enough research and then the raccoons stole them. It was a whole thing.
Then my lovely Tumblr friend suggested pecans. And they loved pecans. But they kept taking them to-go. They did not linger on the log long enough to take a photo. If you aren’t familiar, I am using a remote camera setup with wireless lighting controls and watching everything from a security camera on my couch. There is a slight delay and by the time I hit the button, they were halfway to their nest with a fresh, expensive pecan.
Then I got walnut pieces. They were small enough that the squirrels would eat one before taking a second to-go. I was on to something. But the squirrels kept showing up before I was awake. Narcolepsy likes to shift my schedule all around. So I slowly changed my bedtime so I would be awake when the squirrels were most active.
I was finally ready. I had the food. I had the camera and lights in place.
And it started raining.
My camera is weather sealed, but my lights are not. So I had to drag everything back inside and hope water had not infiltrated my strobes. Thankfully, they seem to be unscathed.
This morning I double checked the weather and there was no rain predicted. I set everything back up. I put out a mix of pecans and walnut pieces. And I waited for my subjects to hop atop my log.
And that is when Walnumina arrived. I determined she was a lady squirrel due to her diminutive size and utter lack of nuts.
Nutholomew demonstrated the testicular prowess of guy squirrels and my amateur zoology instincts allowed me to deduce that squirrel nuts are hard to miss. I’ve also learned that boy squirrels have a belly button that isn’t a belly button. There was an incident involving 400% zoom and a small globule of urine emerging from the non-belly button that I am trying to erase from my brain.
I’m pretty happy with my squirrel photography success. The persistence paid off. I am not finished with this project though. I hope to capture a few more squirrels in front of my lens.
Because I really enjoy naming them.

Some behind the scenes of my efforts…

I am using two lights. One from the top and one from the side.

I have a pretty convoluted setup but it is working well. There is a wireless shutter trigger and a wireless light trigger. And I had to get this double hot shoe thingie that allows me to use them both at the same time.

I use my test squirrel named Squirmothy to figure out the lighting and exposure and focus and depth of field.

His eye is about 39 inches from the camera sensor, so I calculated the DOF was about 4.5 inches using a 50mm lens at f/8.

The plane of focus is where the red and blue meet. So the DOF extends about 2.25 inches in front of and behind that plane.

My camera is 10 years old and doesn’t have eye-tracking, so I have to lock the focus in that central area and hope that is where the squirrels decide to rest. But if they get too close or too far, things start to get blurry.

In focus, too close, too far.

This is why I spent days zooming in on 6500 bird eyes to see if they were blurry or not. I had to delete 3000 blurry bird photos due to the limitations of my camera.

I know it is a popular mantra to say “gear doesn’t matter,” but I will be asking Santa for a new camera for Christmas.

I still can’t stand or sit upright from very long. Usually only 5-10 minutes at a time. So I set up a security camera with motion alarms. This alerts me when the squirrels enter the area. And then I wait from them to steal some nuts.

This is the feed I get on my computer while lying on the couch.

The delay is a bit annoying so I have to try and anticipate when to take the photo.

I have the camera set to burst mode but I have very inexpensive studio strobes and they do not recycle very fast. So the lights only fire every other photo.

However, this allows me to show a direct comparison with and without lights.

The exposure without the lights is pretty dark.

But modern cameras allow you to raise the exposure dramatically in post.

And then this is the best edit I could do with a natural light photo.

And this is the RAW file with the lighting.

Here are the edited versions side by side—natural light vs studio light.

The big difference I noticed is that the shape of her legs is much more defined and there is a clarity of detail in the fur and face. But also, the amount of time and energy required to edit the photo with lighting was minimal. Whereas the natural light version required a lot more color correction and dodging and burning to reach the standard I wanted. The overcast light of that day was a bit cool and did not reveal the warm tones of the squirrel’s fur.

Here is another pose I caught without and with lighting.

I didn’t really design the lighting for a front view so I think the natural light captures the facial expression a little better in this one.

All of this is to say… I didn’t use AI.

Though I have noticed that AI accusations have started moving the goalposts. If you show your behind the scenes process people will now accuse you of generating that as well.

But, like… I’m tired, y'all.

I’m tired all the time.

It’s sort of my thing. I’m the tired guy.

And for me, this is a bit like moon landing conspiracies. It would have been harder to fake the moon landing than to just go to the moon.

It would take me less energy to actually photograph a squirrel than it would to concoct this story, come up with clever squirrel names, research that males have engorged testicles during breeding season, tell the AI to exclude the nuts and belly button and urine globule so it looks like a lady squirrel, and then generate fake BTS photos to match this imaginary scenario.

Do I have to show the globule?

Is that what we’ve come to?

Alright, but if you see Nutholomew, please don’t tell him I showed you this. He’d be super embarrassed.

400% ZOOOOOOM

[ Instagram Portfolio ]

Finished editing the rest of the photos from this set.

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 21:04:02 -0600

The Frogman

Some behind the scenes of my efforts…

Walnumina and Her Walnut

400% ZOOOOOOM

Finished editing the rest of the photos from this set.

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