Mule Deer in Snow
I wanted to get out and photograph mule deer in snow today, but I got a very late start on the day after working on converting my site over to more efficient blocks in WordPress. However it unexpectedly turned out to be quite a fortuitous turn of events. I finally got my snowshoes on and hit the trail at about 1:00 p.m. not expecting to get anything but exercise. But of course I carried my camera, I wouldn’t think of hitting the woods without it!
The Three Amigos
I was about halfway up to the summit when I spotted a lone buck mule deer. He was in the shade, but I decided to snap a picture anyway, if nothing else just to have a record of the scene. However the beautiful animal moved into the light while I was shooting and I was able to get a pretty nice capture. He stopped to stare at me from the top of the ridge when I noticed another buck in the shade. And then there were three, my beloved Three Amigos that have been traveling together for so many years. I never managed to get all three in one frame, but I was delighted to see them after going so long without so much as a glimpse!
It took quite a bit of fiddling with the control ring on my RF adapter for my EF 400mm lens to make the snow white. I finally settled on a compensation value of +1.67, which exposed both the deer and the snow properly. An 800th of a second at f/5.6 resulted in an ISO of 640 so unfortunately I had a little noise to deal with. But DXO Pure Raw rendered a clear image without having to use any additional AI software.\
Storm Clouds on the Sangre de Cristo
The trio eventually meandered over the ridge into the dense forest and out of sight. I continued on toward the overlook where angry clouds lingered over the Sangre de Cristo Range. I struggled to hold the camera still in the wind so I took a break and readied my monopod / trekking pole. With just one leg of stability I was able to get a few clean shots of the range in dark ominous skies
On days like this the colors are either nonexistent or unable to add any value to the image, so I have converted it to black and white using silver toning to add some coolness and to the overall chilly mood of the scene.
Number 10,000
Somewhere along the way, without my knowledge I captured image number 10,000 with my Canon R7. That’s not too bad I guess for almost six months. I think I shot that many of the osprey in one month a few years ago when I got my 90D. At any rate, here is number 10,000. Not a particularly exceptional image by any stretch of the imagination, but a milestone indeed. Fortunately however, the R7 is mirrorless so a good share of that 10,000 was captured with the electronic shutter. There is no wear on the mechanical shutter when electronic mode is used, and that is a good thing. I heard one guy got a half a million actuations out of his 90D so I can’t imagine how long a mirrorless body is going to last. Long enough I guess!
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