I awoke at 4:00 this morning and – as is customary – I couldn’t fall back asleep. By 5:00 I was looking at my phone to look at the sunrise forecast and to see if there was something that could try to capture with my camera, but I couldn’t come up with an idea. The sun was going to rise in less than 40 minutes and there was no cloud cover, so the sunrise was going to be very unremarkable.
Part of me wanted to just go sit at the computer and putz around, but I thought better of it, grabbed my camera gear, got dressed, and got into the car to drive to Green Lakes with intentions of going for a walk and taking pictures of wildlife … if I could find any. The birds would be out for sure, but the deer are always a little hit-and-miss depending on where one walks in the park. I decided to try my luck in the northeast corner of the rolling hills and hoped that as the sun rose over the immediate tree line, I might be able to capture an image or 2 of some not-too-far away deer in a warm morning light.
As I came to the field, I quickly came to a stop when I saw 2 deer to the north, grazing along the treeline. With camera already in hand and set to click the shutter, I stood perfectly still and captured a few images. At this point in the morning, the sun had risen above the horizon, but not above the hillside and tree line to my immediate east, so the light was poor and I needed to push the limits of my old sensor.
As I stood perfectly still, both deer took notice of me. One was particularly curious and after staring at me for 2-3 minutes began to walk in my direction.
The deer closed the distance between us by about 50% before stopping and giving me a good once over.
After less than 1 minute, the deer decided that I was no longer worth their time, turned around, and returned to their companion, so I slowly began making my way west. Having already garnered their trust, the deer just watched me slowly increase the distance between us as the continued to graze along the treeline.
As I made my west, the sun was indeed cresting the treeline and bathing the next field over with a warm morning light. In doing so, it cast its light on a sole dear who was grazing all by their lonesome.
I was glad that I was getting the opportunity to see them this morning, because these fields will be nearly overgrown in a mere month or two.
I made my way further north and was able to a few deer in the next field (still to my west/left). Pictures were taken and they were sharp, although not worth of sharing here. This morning all of my deer-images were being captured at 300mm (600mm FFeq), so I was using the in-body image stabilization to keep the speed as low as I could afford (1/400) with the widest aperture that my lens would allow, and auto ISO (max value of 6400). I composed the image first, then selected the face with the d-pad to back button focus before zooming in to 3-5x magnification and fine-tuning with manual focus prior capturing a series of images with high-speed burst mode and electronic shutter (trying to stay quiet).
As I made my west again, I crested the hills with no more deer to seen … or so I thought. After I came through the field and began to make my way toward the mountain bike trail, I came across another 2 deer, only one of which would allow me to take its picture. Even then, I was trying to lean left and do a slow mini-squat to frame the deer’s head inside the branch of the tree that was positioned between us.
This would be my last deer sighting. As I made my way south and past the mountain bike section, there was a lot of that early morning light that I am a sucker for … you know, that light that peeks through the shadows and begs for a low key treatment. So I captured a few image before returning to the fields.
There were a variety of sparrows that I took pictures of throughout the latter half of the morning, but these 2 were the most interesting to me.
I imagined that there are eggs in the birdhouse, but that the house is warm enough from the sunlight that they need not be tended to. I thought about how different these birds lives will be in only a few short months. I remembered how things were for Christine and I before Austin was born and wondered if these birds had any idea of what was about to confront them after their eggs hatch.
The last image that I really liked was of a bird (sparrow? finch?) preening itself. With out the appropriate scale, one could almost be tricked into thinking it was a hawk.
I would end up spending 2.5 hours at the park and – despite not walking away with an image I would hang on a wall – it proved to be a very calm and enjoyable morning.