Darth deer
- 📍 Location: Forêt de Rambouillet, France
- 📅 Date: September 2023
One early autumn morning in the forest of Rambouillet, a stag stepped out of the mist and simply held still, as though it had decided to let itself be seen rather than heard first. Low sun caught its antlers and reduced its eyes to two small, sharp points of light against the dark trees behind it, giving the whole frame a slightly ominous, almost cinematic weight, which is where the title comes from.
I shot this in black and white, so that nothing but that stillness and that stare would carry the frame: no autumn colour to soften the encounter, just the animal, the light, and the dark.
The composition gives almost the whole frame to the dark. The stag stands in profile, cut by nothing, and the rest of the picture holds no information at all beyond a faint suggestion of trunks. In colour that emptiness would read as underexposure; in black and white it reads as space, and it is what gives the animal its weight.
Exposing this way is a decision taken at the moment of the frame rather than afterwards: I set the exposure for the lit edge of the antlers and the back and let everything below the shoulder fall away. What survives is a single line of light drawing the head, the antlers and the spine, and nothing else. The title came afterwards, but the intention was already there: not the portrait of a stag, a silhouette that looks back.
Awards & Recognition
- Monochrome Awards, 2024: Honorable Mention, Wildlife
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
