Saturday, April 14, 2012

Wide-angle White-tailed Deer - Behind the Scenes

White-tailed Deer. Gear: Canon 1D mk IV, Sigma 12-24 lens
I have never spent much time, or had much luck for that matter, photographing White-tailed Deer. So when my friend Dave Gignac started posting great photos of tame deer he was photographing in a city park near his home, I jumped at the chance to join him for a morning. The cool thing about this situation is that the deer were being regularly fed by people and had become extraordinarily approachable at times. This was an opportunity to do things a bit differently, so I opted for wide-angle and medium telephoto lenses instead of the usual super-telephotos typically used for wildlife photography.


When I met Dave before sunrise for our photo shoot, I had high expectations - and they were far exceeded. The deer came in as predicted and at times were within minimum focusing distance of my ultra-wide angle lens. It's so much fun to be this close to animals. Here's a short behind the scenes video of that photo shoot, taken with a GoPro HD Hero video camera that I usually have along with me just for these kinds of moments:


Ever since being awestruck by Jim Brandenburg's famous photo of a wolf peeking from behind a tree, I always get excited by opportunities to capture this style of photo.  
White-tailed Deer. Gear: Canon 1D mk IV, Sigma 70-200/2.8


5 comments:

  1. What an adorable animal and great shots - especially the forst one. Love it:)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think that first picture is (or is near to) the best deer photo I've ever seen!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. These are much fun! We have about 20 deer in our backyard in winter. I never tire of taking photos! My favourite was Tigger! , who used to follow our cat about the woods when we went for walkies. He's grown, and we usually only get the does. We have a fawn about, too!

    ReplyDelete