Deer's in the Mist
Deer's in the Mist - early morning deer grazing in Gosford Forest Park, Markethill, Northern Ireland.
Deer's in the Mist - early morning deer grazing in Gosford Forest Park, Markethill, Northern Ireland.
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Apr, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in Gosford Forest Park, Markethill, Co Armagh, Northern Ireland. Gosford Forest Park, formerly Gosford Demesne, was acquired by the Department of Agriculture in 1958 and comprises some 240 hectares of diverse woodland and open parkland set in gentle rolling drumlin countryside. It was designated the first conservation forest in Northern Ireland in 1986. The deer are free to roam in one of two large enclosures and you can normally get a sight of the herd from waymarked trails.Time
This shot was taken on the 17th Oct 2015 at around 8:30 in the morning.Lighting
The night before we noticed the weather forecast for the next day would be dry, but we could not have imagined that we were going to get such lovely light. We had arrived at the park around 7:30 in the morning to catch the first light, but the complete area was covered in dense mist, with no sight of the deer anywhere. As the morning progressed the sun started to rise above the hills and the mist started to disperse to revel the deer. This shot was taken backlit by the sun breaking thought the forest canopy, which produced the subtle rays of light hitting the deer and dew covered grass.Equipment
The shot was taken on a Sony ILCE-A5100, CSC camera with a standard kit lens (E PZ 16-50mm). 1/250 sec at F7.1, ISO 100. at 50mmInspiration
October is the Deer rutting season and I had hoped to get some action shots of the stags testing each other. I had specifically went to this park in the hope of getting a shot to enter into one of the rounds of the Northern Ireland Photographic Association (NIPA) Interclub Competition. The image was entered into the Contra Jour round and got starred, it then went through the Grand Final and won the Best Colour Print 2015/2016.Editing
I did some basic processing on the RAW file in Lightroom, but the photo is very close to the way the JPG looked on the screen. It was cropped to take some of the bright area from the top and dark area at the right of the picture. A tighter crop was tried, removing the bright area at the top as I thought it maybe too distracting, but once the sky was removed the context of the picture was lost, in the end a compromise was made to leave a little of the white.In my camera bag
I had two cameras with me on the day, a Nikon 5200 with a 55-300mm VR lens. As I thought I wouldn't get that close to the deer and would need the reach of the 300mm on a dx body (450mm). I had the Sony with me purely as a back-up, in the end 3 of the 4 best shots of the day were taken with the Sony.Feedback
Shots like this take a fair degree of luck, but you can increase your chance of making the shot with some planning. Look for the right weather, misty sun-light mornings, in Autumn gives beautiful light especially if you can get the deer backlit. Try to keep some detail in the deer rather than making them into a complete silhouette as it makes for a more interesting shot. Spectral rays at such a wide aperture was good fortune.
