Dave Stevenson
He was right, but, then, neither were we. When it goes well, wildlife photography is just about my favourite thing in the world. When it goes badly, which can be often, there’s little more frustrating.
Put yourself in the shoes, if you will, of a person who has dragged themselves from a warm north London bed before six in the morning and hauled a bag full of camera gear to Richmond in the hope of a beautiful sunrise illuminating Britain’s largest mammals during their exhilarating mating season.
Now subtract the sunrise, add drizzle and imagine that all the deer are sheltering in the undergrowth. That was my first morning. And a large part of my second morning.
You shouldn’t misunderstand me, of course. I’d rather be in the open air than virtually anywhere else on Earth, and Richmond Park on a quiet, grey morning before the arrival of hordes of dog walkers and the morning rush hour is a marvellous reminder of how important and calm London’s green spaces can be. However, when you’ve allocated a few precious days and are draping plastic sheeting over your gently rusting equipment, every minute counts.
Shooting deer is something I recommend every learning photographer does, particularly in the autumn. For one thing, deer are active animals in general, but become particularly frisky during the rut, meaning your chances of seeing interesting and exciting interactions go through the roof.
They’re also straightforward animals to practice on. Unlike, say, gorillas, they don’t play havoc with your camera’s metering system and, unlike most British birds, they’re big enough that you don’t need an enormous lens in order to either fill the frame or get decent focus. On the other hand, though, deer have spent hundreds of years being hunted by humans, which means they’re skittish enough that careful field craft is needed to get close enough to get an interesting shot. Crucially, they’re also incredibly numerous, which means you’re guaranteed a good sighting.
You’re not, on the other hand, guaranteed good light and, without that your odds of getting a truly interesting shot can dwindle. I reflected on that as we sat underneath our tree, gradually getting damper and idly pondering the true meaning of ‘weatherproof’ as it pertains to DSLRs.
Still, mid-afternoon, overcast light can be useful: I’ve seen it described as a kind of natural softbox, with sunlight filtering and diffusing through the layer of cloud.
Overcast weather is also a superb opportunity to discard all the colour data in your files and opt for treating a few photos as black and white. This has several benefits. First, creating black-and-white images is something few photographers bother with, even though the results are often stunning. Second, my experience is that cameras – even expensive ones – struggle with white balance in overcast conditions, and converting to black and white is a great way of avoiding bothersome colour correction procedures. A further plus is that grey skies generally mean higher ISOs, which can be a problem in colour photography. In black-and-white photography, though, a touch of film-like grain is beneficial to the old-time feel of your shot.
Eventually, the clouds broke and we got some beautiful golden light. This neatly coincided with my favourite sequence of the day, a pair of stags clashing antlers. Seeing larger deer have physical confrontations is unusual, as deer are acutely aware of physical mismatches and so will shy away from each other. If you’re lucky enough to see big stags going at each other, my twofold advice would be not to waste what’s likely to be a rare moment and, secondly, to stay well out of the way.
A third piece of advice would be to stay well away from other photographers. Large crowds generally have two effects. The first is that they drive animals away from them, which is unhelpful, and, second, a line of photographers will achieve the interesting but useless phenomenon of taking exactly the same photo from very slightly different angles.
I headed into the bushes, achieving in the process a sequence of sharp, action-packed backlit images that I could never have got if I hadn’t followed the golden rule of all photography and moved my feet. With the deer busy rutting and other photographers reluctant to dive into the undergrowth, finding a unique vantage point helped hugely. The other thing I achieved shortly after taking these images was sharing a bush with a pair of enormous deer, both oblivious to my presence. With a lens too long to get more shots, I concentrated instead on planning an exit strategy that didn’t end with me impaled.
Eventually, wet and exhausted, I got the early morning sunlight I’d been looking for. Half seven on a Monday morning produced the light every photographer dreams of. Warm, golden and direct, a decent sunrise means that the hard work of photography – working with available light and bending it to your wishes – is all done for you, leaving you the task of finding photogenic subjects and snapping them while they graze. The last few shots I got are among my favourites of the weekend, and are testament to the benefits of not letting a little rain get you down.
