White-tailed Doe

[Andrew McLachlan]

170824

While paddling my canoe through the wetland on Horseshoe Lake near Parry Sound, Ontario in search of Bullfrogs I looked up to see this large, female White-tailed Deer at the edge of the peat bog. She remained relatively calm during my presence and allowed for several various compositions of her among the cotton grass. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate any adult Bullfrogs in the wetland this year, only a handful of juveniles.

Nikon D500
Nikkor 200-500mm VR Lens @ 240mm (35mm equivalent = 360mm)
ISO 800
f5.6 @ 1/320 sec
Handheld from canoe

Looking forward to comments and suggestions.

[Stuart Philpott]

Hi Andrew,as an amphibian nut let me start with I hope things are ok for the bullfrogs...great barometers for health of an ecosystem frogs!! Lets hope they are there and it's just a bit of bad luck on your part not finding them.

Andrew it's a fine frame, lovely to look at, gorgeous, with all the cotton grass etc,I find the colours quite saturated,but am uncalibrated so we'll see what the others say,my only negative really is I'd like her higher in frame ie a bit more virtual leg room please.I like the young tree is sort of balances the frame but isn't overpowering. The ears are wonderful I love her intense stare towards you .
Always cool to see your images of wildlife Andrew,I have always admired the way to think and the way that lends itself into your pictures and animalscapes

take care

Stu

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Andrew - A nice find and great eye contact. The low perspective works and the tree balances the deer nicely in frame. Pulling back may have given you more room below for the legs. If it were mine I would remove or decrease the magenta/blue/purple on the doe. I forgot to mention that you don't have a color profile embedded.

TFS,
Rachel

[Gemma Watson]

Hi, Andrew. The photo is really outstanding with the great background. Seems the deer stand and give pose just to capture her.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Andrew, lovely scene and I very much like the fact the female deer is off-set, nice balance by the young sapling on the LHS.

Agree that you need a sliver more below for the virtual legs, just pulling back on the lens would have helped, but easily said with hindsight. No idea on how far you could push the D500, but for me, a tad more SS as it's HH, and if ISO allowed, perhaps increasing the DoF too, however nose to the ears look good at this size. The image does have a lovely look & feel to it because of the location, but if the image doesn't have the sRGB profile, as you know things may not be portrayed as they should be, easily corrected. I also like the white flower 'peppering' the image and I don't find them distracting in this context.

But based on the OP, just tweaking the WB seems to address a lot of the main colour issues, but you do then have to look at the colours too. I'm in too minds about the blue coming through in he trees, as it also seems to 'pop' the sapling which I like, but not in the subject.

Not sure if this helps Andrew, or is a big departure from the original, however I keep thinking about our exchange prior to your trip.

TFS
Steve

[John Mack]

Very nice love the environment here and all the green. Good composition as well nice detail on the doe.

[Glenn Pure]

A really lovely atmospheric shot. I especially like the white OOF flowers/pods and the sharp sapling on the left.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks so much for the comments and suggestions folks, much appreciated!

Steve, thanks for the repost...I like it better than my OP so I have tweaked my master image file accordingly...I depart on September 18th for the trip :S3: