Its only taken 25 years…
Red Deer
It’s fair to say that I love winter, and especially snow, it adds something special to an image.
Now there’s a shot I’ve been trying to take for a very long time, an image of a Red Deer in falling snow.
I’ve seen countless other photographers get the shots who just happen to be in the right place either through design or sheer good luck.
We’ve spent the past three Christmas holidays in the highlands of Scotland and this year the cold weather had been threatening for a while. At the start of week three, the weather gods delivered, sub zero temperatures and a good foot of snow on the ground.
The best place to try and get a reliable shot of Red Deer in the snow is at the Alvie estate just outside Aviemore. During the winter months a herd of deer are supplement fed to get them through the harder times. These are wild deer so still not easy to photograph but it gets them a little bit closer to you and in a beautiful tree backed setting.
I’d actually booked a spot with the keeper a few weeks in advance as its a popular place but there’s no guarantee of the conditions at the time. When I woke up the morning before the booking and saw it was snowing heavily outside and was forecast to do so for most of the day, I decided to chance my arm and ring the estate to see if they could fit me in. A quick call back and to my surprise we could go.
Graeme the keeper took us up the hill in his pick up in very deep snow through some beautiful Scots pine trees and stunning views.
The deer knew what was coming and could be seen dotted through the trees.
Red Deer
The snow came down thick and fast covering the trees and the deer, their antlers covered in snow.
The silence was most noticeable, like a giant cotton wool blanket covering the landscape, a beautiful experience.
Even with the deer in front of us the snow was falling so heavily that the autofocus systems couldn’t cope and manual focus had to be relied upon.
This was an experience that you can’t really plan for, either luck or a lucky phone call…….sometimes everything just falls into place.
Red Deer