Deer Shadow Play
Another dream image from a fairytale series. The stag and the hind show themselves backlit, while the golden light is filtered by the morning mist and the trees...
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Another dream image from a fairytale series. The stag and the hind show themselves backlit, while the golden light is filtered by the morning mist and the trees. The animals get in the spotlight similarly to shadow puppets. Picture taken during the annual rutting season of the red deer.
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Nov, 2015Views
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KevinWarnecke
January 08, 2016
This is absurdly beautiful. How long were you waiting around to snap this shot?
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
Klampenborg, DenmarkTime
This dream shot is part of a fairytale series of pictures taken during the annual rutting season of the red deer. There was an exceptional three-mornings-in-a-row mist. This was the third and the last morning in the series. While the few remaining photographers dedicated their entire attention to the belling stags, hoping to capture the steam, I decided to rather follow the hinds and the great light. In this picture the stag and the hind show themselves backlit, while the golden light is filtered by the morning mist and the trees. The animals get in the spotlight similarly to shadow puppets.Lighting
As animals are used to people more than in other places, that enabled me to achieve compositions which exceeded my expectations. I identified three different clearings, not far from each other, and I checked all of them before sunrise. Each morning I spent more time in the clearing with more mist and more animals. There were other places with even more deer but the light and composition conditions were not so good, so my perseverance in the same place was thoroughly rewarded.Equipment
For this particular shot I used Canon 7D Mark II and Canon 100-400 mm IS II.Inspiration
One day I asked Mother Nature: “Mother Nature, I have been considerate, and faithful, and kind. But I got covered skies and tricky deer 6 times already, in different places. Would it be possible to give me LIGHT and COLD weather and DEER at the same time?” And Mother Nature answered: “I’ll give you the LASER of the morning sunrays, the COLD weather of a late autumn day and the DEER of a royal court.” And that’s all she did. As simple as that:)Editing
My post-processing is quite basic. In this case I applied a gradual filter on the right corner of the picture. Otherwise the magic was already there.In my camera bag
I normally have a Canon 7D Mark II, in combination with Canon 100-400 mm IS II or Canon 70-200 mm f 4 IS and Canon 16-35 mm f 2.8 IS II. I have also tried the Canon 5D Mark III and I achieved great shots, I hope I will have a full frame in the future. I have widely used before a Canon 700D and managed to get some outstanding shots when combined with Canon 70-200 mm f 4 IS.Feedback
1) love and knowledge of nature: I love wildlife and nature since I know myself and I read hundreds of books about wildlife before the Internet boom and before watching the Discovery Channel or National Geographic. If you do something just because it is "trendy", because other people do it etc then in most of the cases the results would not be the same. You have to genuinely love what you do. 2) thorough preparation: In life there are normally trade-offs. Most of the people cannot have everything. In an ideal world a person would see a lot of amazing places and a lot of amazing animals. But in the real world I would advise people to favour quality over quantity. Less places and subjects, but to get better to know them. To spend several times at the same location. 3) patience: To accept that most of the times things do not go as you imagined. But sometimes they may exceed any expectations. For instance, in the case of this shot, one week before I was in a different location where I did not manage to take one single decent shot. Patience is a virtue.
