Morning deer
- 📍 Location: Forêt de Rambouillet, France
- 📅 Date: 2023
A deer crossing a clearing in the forest of Rambouillet in the first hour of the day, walking from shadow into shadow through a corridor of backlight. The animal is almost a silhouette, outlined by a thread of light along the back and the underside, and the grass in front of it is burning white.
This picture is made entirely against the light, which means accepting that most of the frame will be lost. The trees go black, the far side of the clearing goes black, and what remains is a narrow band of gold in which a shape moves. Exposing for the highlights keeps the glow intact and reduces the deer to an outline, and the outline is enough: the profile of a deer is one of the most immediately legible shapes in European nature.
The mist does the rest. Low sun through damp air does not simply light a scene, it makes the air itself visible, and the beams that seem to fall between the trunks are only sunlight meeting water.
Mornings like that have a particular quality of nerves. The light lasts perhaps fifteen minutes, everything is moving, nothing waits for you, and you know that the picture will be decided by whether an animal walks into the right metre of ground at the right second.
My intention was to photograph the light and let the deer pass through it, rather than photograph the deer and treat the light as decoration.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
