What Is the First Word That Comes to Your Mind?

Upon seeing this image, what was the first word that came to your mind? Does the dictionary-present “Aw” stretched to “Awwwww” count?
 
Being tame, this adorable 1-day-old fawn had zero concern with my presence and that opened up the opportunity to capture some unique-perspective close-up images. When it became obvious that she was going down for some solid sleep time (about the only time fawns become motionless), I swapped the Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Lens for the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM Lens and moved in close. The close perspective emphasizes the fawn’s head, ears and hoof, making them appear large in proportion to what is farther away. As those are especially cute parts of this little animal, that perspective works well.
 
Having a still subject was only the first challenge solved and several others remained. Shooting under a high tree canopy created several additional challenges for this capture. First, it was rather dark at the ground level. Second, the backlit, light-spring-green-colored hardwood tree leaves created a green cast on the scene. And, as the breeze moved the branches, spots of direct sunlight was intermittently hitting the subject, causing bright hot spots in the image.
 
Using a monopod braced against my leg allowed me to shoot at a relatively-long 1/25 second shutter speed, addressing the darkness challenge. The color cast had to be removed during post processing and I had to revisit the color balance adjustments over a period of time until I grew comfortable with the result. I may change my mind about the color adjustments tomorrow. The last challenge was resolved with careful timing of the moving shadows, avoiding most of the hot spot problem.
 
As is so often the case with photography, the effort was worth the reward.
 
Hopefully the sleeping fawn brought a smile to your day! A larger version of this image is available on Flickr.
 

Camera and Lens Settings
50mm  f/8.0  1/125s
ISO 2500
8688 x 5792px

Canon, Nikon and Sony News, Deals and What’s New at The-Digital-Picture.com

This entry was posted in Photo Equipment and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply