The Chase
by Peter Cross
I was out early this morning to the local nature area and while waiting at a spot for something to happen, this buck showed up. He came walking out of the woods and over to a doe. She apparently caught his eye. But she wasn't interested and walked away. Well, he just fell in behind her and they both increased their speed and they made quite some journey around the open area. She tried to take refuge in a group of other does but he wasn't interested in the others: just her. He kept pushing her and they went off into another section of woods. Whether or not any breeding finally took place, I don't know. If you look closely at the buck you'll see he has a very deformed left antler. I was curious about this during the fall and I finally got a good shot that I could blow up to see. Looks like his skull in the place where they antler attaches has been bent down. I don't know if this is genetic or he had an accident. I'll be looking for him next fall to see what kind of antler develops. He'll be pretty easy to identify. Full frame image with a number of minor tweaks to get the photo closer to how I remember the scene. Comments and critiques are welcomed.
Tech Info
Canon EOS 60D with 70-200mm f/4L at 159mm
1/400th at f/8 and ISO 1600
Tripod
Lightroom 5
Comments
4 commentsI like the composition and the leg pose and stance you captured. The unique antler also helps this photo.
The antler in the back for me is a little hard to see because the branches behind it are a little distracting. If the antler was against the grass then it might be easier to see it. Great exposure and shot!
Even if one didn't read the description above it would be apparent that the buck is interested and focused on something, and following it. So in that regard you've communicated the message clearly.
On the technical side this one looks quite good - sharp where it should be and the exposure looks fine.
On the "creative meets technical" side - I realize that this is full frame, and I would suggest that the initial shot might have been stronger if you cut out part of the foreground - some of it is out of focus anyway and adds little to the image. This would also have "grounded" the subject a little more solidly and pull it out of the midline in doing so. I also think that if you had done that, you could have opened up the aperture more (partly because you have less foreground to worry about keeping in focus!) and thus isolated the subject even MORE from the background - drawing MORE attention to the behaviour you're documenting. That, of course, also would have allowed you to drop the ISO, which is always a good thing with virtually any camera.
Hope this makes sense...just kind of a brain-dump reflecting how I work in the field!
Cheers...
Brad