We went on a cruise during the last week of April. The day before we left, I spotted a single deer wandering in the corner of our yard. I had recently cut some tree limbs that were ruined over the winter. I was too lazy to drag them away and she thought they made delicious snacks where they were. I ran in to grab my D500 and 150 – 600mm lens to get some shots before she ran away, fully expecting her to do so as soon as I appeared.
To my surprise, she simply didn’t care and continued eating. I started taking photos at a normal distance around 100 ft away and slowly moved in. She didn’t seem to notice as I got closer and closer and closer to the point where I couldn’t get any closer without cropping her out. I’ve never seen a deer that let me get this close. She just ate quietly, stopping occasionally to look at me (and Sally and the boys) to see if we were a threat, then continued eating.
It was odd that she was alone. We frequently have deer in our yard but they generally move in groups. I don’t know if she was lost or what. Now you could say that she had rabies, but she wasn’t foaming at the mouth and wasn’t acting aggressive. She wasn’t eating at an abnormal time and never attempted to come toward us.
She continued eating for about 20 minutes and we enjoyed her. I took photos the entire time until, as quickly as she appeared, she wandered back into the wilderness.
When it comes to the photos, I’d say they’re OK. I still get frazzled and don’t always ensure I have the right focus in the right place and I’m still shakier with my lenses than I want to be. I experimented with a couple different autofocus area modes, using 25 point dynamic area as well as 3D tracking. I used 3D tracking to be lazy and just put the focus point on the deer, recompose, and shoot. The results were just as lazy, often times focusing on the body and leaving the head ever-so-slightly soft. I got better results using 25 point dynamic area and putting the box on her head, but even then, it didn’t always focus on what I wanted to. I should have switched to single point focus and put the point on her eye where I wanted it in the first place. It wasn’t like she was moving very fast…
As the light was starting to fall behind the trees at this point, I had to use higher ISOs, mostly above 5000, to ensure proper exposure. The good news is that few of my images required exposure adjustments in post. The bad is that the images look a bit too noisy for my liking. No fear though, Lightroom and DXO AI noise reduction to the rescue! I processed most of these using Deep PRIME because it generates slightly better quality than Lightroom at smaller file sizes. I also tried the new Deep PRIME XD model, but it rendered the deer’s fur in a painterly-like style that didn’t look natural.
While I’ve never been able to get this close to a deer before, the compositions were not always optimal. The deer was down in the brush in our yard, not very far from the tree line. It didn’t provide a lot of distance to blur the background, especially at the f/8 needed to get the sharpest results out of my lens. You can see this in the full body shots. It’s a lot better in the shots of just the deer’s head. So I’d say compositions were 50/50.
Relatively Ambitious 