Happy Easter 2022… I probably should have gone to Easter service at church, but somehow a gathering of people don’t seem to bring me closer to God. I knew my trail would be peaceful today so that is where I went to celebrate my Easter holiday.
I was greeted by this little band of doe mule deer, also apparently enjoying this beautiful quiet morning. I stopped my hike for a half hour or so to take a few pictures and let them pass. They were wanting to go around the fence and I didn’t want to scare them into running straight at it where they would be forced to jump.
Eventually they slowly passed, enjoying a bit of mountain grass along they way and I went on in to Victor to see if anything was open for breakfast. Well nothing was open but I again spotted this cool old abandoned structure on the mountainside that I’ve been trying to photograph for some time this year. As I drove through town I caught a glimpse of it that I hadn’t seen before and got to thinking with a long enough lens I might be able to get the capture.
So I parked my truck and put on the 100-400L and took a walk through town. I couldn’t get the pine trees out of the lower left corner, but the view of the old house was pretty good… if I was patient enough to wait for the wind gusts to stop, the south wind was blowing the flags over my scene most of the time making it impossible to shoot. Finally I got a few seconds of calm and took the shot, 1/1250th of a second at f/5.6 and ISO 320.
I was able to coax a bit more contrast out of the image by converting to monochrome with the Photoshop channel mixer and am fairly pleased with the results. Once summer comes and those branches get leaves on them this image will be impossible until next winter.
I’m happy to report that my books are getting a bit of attention and even today someone read over 50 pages on their Kindle account!