Pacas at night

A paca is a large rodent found in Central and South America. I photographed these three pacas in Costa Rica using off-camera flash at night. I don't like on-camera flash at all, especially when photographing wildlife, because the light appears too harsh and subjects look flat without shadows or dimension. In this case, I placed my camera backpack on the ground and positioned the flash on top of it. The angle of the light was about 60 degrees to the lens axis, and that gave me the type of light I was looking for. The settings were 1/160, f/16, and 320 ISO. I had to use a small lens aperture to insure all three animals would be sharp.