Deer Diddly Squat
A deer decided to take a squat in front of me.
It was an early winter morning, I had decided to venture through Cade’s Cove in Tennessee for my Landscape Photography class assignment. It’s a huge park in the Smoky Mountains, and I wanted to get some images of the wildlife while I was there. Since it’s about 4 hours from where I live, I decided the night before that I would just stay awake and pull an all nighter to make sure I would leave on time, so that way I could get there as the park opened at sunrise. Ideally, I should have gotten a cheap room in the area or camped out the night before, but I planned this trip fairly last minute.
Cade’s Cove is sort of this giant loop and you drive through it to view it and enjoy the majestic scenery. I saw several different animals on my way in, but there were these three deer grazing in this field. The lenses I had were a 50mm f1.8 and my kit lens, the 24-70mm. If you know anything about lenses, then you know I had to get fairly close if I wanted a decent shot of the wildlife.
Deer get frightened easily, so I started by taking pictures of them from a great distance. They didn’t seem bothered by my presence, so I would slowly make my way closer to them while the grazed and roamed. It took at least an hour, but it felt like an eternity to gain their trust.
I walked slowly towards them step by step, like when you’re trying to creep past your kid’s bedroom to help Santa deliver the presents on Christmas Eve, but there’s a creaky floor board so you have to tread ever so carefully so that it doesn’t creak. Eventually, I was a few feet away from them.
One of the deer had ventured off to another area of the pasture, so I focused on the one closest to me, and got closer and closer until I had the angle and image I was looking for. The other deer that had ventured off started making it’s way back. The three deer were getting ready to leave the area, and I was starting to get tired and cold. My thighs were starting to itch under my jeans because they were chilled.
However, before the deer decided to leave the area, the one I had been focusing on started to position itself in a way I had seen my dog do so many times. I had never seen deer releave themselves, so imagine my surprise when this deer was squatting in front of me. Doing it’s business, taking a whizz. I was so surprised so I snapped a picture. I couldn’t wait to get back to an area with cell signal, so that I could talk about what just happened. I made a quick facebook post about it, so that it would post when I was on my way down from the mountains. People were going crazy about it, saying things like “pics or it didn’t happen!”
As soon as I uploaded the pictures from my memory card, I went straight to this image. I cropped it to this final result, because you could see the other deer in the original. The only other editing I did was the color tones, because I wanted it to be as authentic as possible while still being art. I posted it online and people went crazy about it. For a while I thought, “Is this how I go viral? Is THIS the image I’m going to be known for?” I was afraid, but excited.
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