Deer through the trees

As a bit of a break from all the coastal photographs recently, here’s an intimate woodland scene from Knole back in the autumn of 2018.

Taken on one of my most productive photography days in the past few years, I’ve shared another photograph from the same day before: Passer-by in the fog. My morning had started out on the Gallops, capturing the trees sitting against the thick foggy atmosphere as the light level slowly rose, before I climbed the side of the shallow valley and into the woodland.

I saw a few deer on my walk (it is a deer park after all) and managed to get this image of a stag moving through the trees to my left not too long after entering the woods. Out in the open, I had been using the GFX 50S on a tripod but once in the woods and for an opportunist capture like this, I was carrying the Fuji X-T3 with XF 50-140mm telephoto zoom both for the reach and wide-ish aperture in such low light. For the GFX, I only had the GF 63/2.8 and 32-64/4 lenses at the time.

There were a couple of frames I took in the woods on this day that just seemed to work really nicely in a wide panoramic 17x6 ratio (a ratio I do generally love) and this was one of them. It helps us focus on the deer while giving plenty of breathing room to either side, showing the environment and depth of trees the deer is moving through.

It’s far from the best photo of a deer ever taken (check out Chait Desh on Instagram for some great deer photos amongst others) but an early attempt of mine and I like the atmosphere of it.