How The Deer Were Photographed
The photograph was taken from the Pantile Bridge which lies at the southern end of Hampton Hill High Street, just before the traffic lights at the junction with Uxbridge Road (see the street map of Hampton Hill). The bridge takes the road across the Longford River and the deer happened to be gathered in the river below it at the time I was passing. I had been out taking some photographs so I had my camera with me. I spotted another pair wrestling and stopped to see if I could take some photographs over the parapet of the bridge. The top of the parapet is around three metres above the ground the deer are standing on so there is no need for a fence along it. (Red deer are very capable high jumpers but 2.5m is about their limit). However, it is only just over a metre high on the road side so I had a clear view down over the animals.I used a 28/80 mm framing lens set to its 80 mm position for this shot. The film stock is 400 ASA Fuji colour negative, which is needed when hand holding this lens even in bright sunlight. The actual exposure would have been around about 1/250th of a second at f11. The image was scanned from a 4 x 6 inch print and cropped to further reduce the background area.
Red deer are generally timid animals. They detect you by both
scent and sound (note the size of their ears). I was upwind of them
when I took my photographs so they were initially aware of me. However,
after a couple of minutes I was ignored and life went on as usual.
The noise of the traffic on the road behind me masked my camera sounds
so the photography did not result in any further disturbance. Consequently
I was able to get an exciting shot using very basic equipment.
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Document: howphoto.htm
Version:
1.20
Date:
1999/07/27
Author:
R.F. Harvey