Archive for the 'deer' Category
Guilty
I had a whole family of roe deer pass by the house today while I was at home and I actually managed to get some pictures and managed to mess them up pretty good, too – I had somehow left the camera on +1 EV while metering from the animals in the dark forest. Talk about hot snow… Anyway, it wasn’t a good opportunity anyway so I’m not disappointed, but what really has me distraught is what I discovered when I was viewing the images in full resolution.
The thing is that I use metal wires to attach some of the bird and squirrel food. In the autumn when I set up everything, I had a few wires over so I wrapped them around a branch in case I would need to re-arrange things. Since it’s metal, I didn’t think there was any risk the wires would come loose but what I didn’t count for was the snow cover, rising and rising… until it was level with the branch the wires are attached to. Since this is the bird feeding place, there’s always some seeds on the ground and the roe deer stop to check if there’s anything left over for them. And so it must have happened, one of the deer had managed to get his antlers inside the wire loop and pulled it off when he raised his head.
I feel horrible. This is just the kind of thing I rant about when other people do it. My only consolation is that the wire doesn’t seem to be stuck in any bad manner so it will hopefully drop off soon.
Needless to say that I won’t be leaving any spare wires out ever again!
2 commentsOh deer me
300mm f4L, ISO 640, f4 @ 1/200. Slight crop from bottom & right.Now that the obligatory play with words is out of the way, let’s concentrate on the picture. We have plenty of roe deer around here, but somehow I’ve just never managed to photograph one. They are very skittish so they will bolt at the first sign of a human being, while they have no problems walking in the streets and around houses. I have a right old deer highway behind my house!
So, imagine my excitement when I spotted two deer grazing behind my neighbour’s house. I opened the window carefully and the animals didn’t mind me so for the first time, I had an opportunity to photograph them. It was sunrise, slightly overcast, day after solstice, so I had to crank up to ISO 640 to get at least 1/200 shutter speed, which was marginally fast enough with my shaking hands. Just to make the opportunity that much sweeter, the sun broke through the clouds for a moment to cast a golden light.
The pictures are noisy and they could be a bit sharper, but they are the only roe deer pictures I have (so far anyway). I’ll keep them, thank you very much!
4 comments
