Hello Deer

My boys and I took a late walk through the nearby nature preserve. It's in the middle of a very busy and heavily populated part of Oakland County, just north of Detroit, yet feels like you're in the middle of the northern Michigan woods. As the light and my legs were failing, we happened upon three deer that stopped to watch the humans. They couldn't have been more than 30 yards from us. This one waited for me to get my 70-200/2.8 on my 20D and set up my tripod and stood there to let me get a few shots. I had to (try to) focus manually, as the brush was fouling the AF. Better than my photo, was my 16-year old's comment. After the deer departed he quietly noted, "so, how hard can hunting be?" "Good point," I said.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Hi there
Is that the colour of the deer or there is a colour cast on your shot?
Dimitri

Hi Dimitri

That was pretty much her color. I did some levels adjustment, color correction and a little bit of saturation in Elements 3, as the original shot, taken in Parameter 2 on the 20D, was pretty flat. When I get home later, I'll put up the unprocessed original so you can see the difference.

I am not saying that i don`t believe you,i was just wandering in case it was colour cast.
Ofcourse there are a lot of diferent types of deer out there.
No need to proove anything.
I believe you.

Dimitri - I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that I was offended - far from it. I was at the office when I read your first post, and I too was curious how much my post-processing might have changed the deer's color.

Here is the original, out-of-camera image with no post-processing at all. Which do you think looks better as far as the color goes? I might have made her a bit too red.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Nice capture, Ron - tough to photograph wildlife in thick vegetation. You definitely have a unnatural reddish cast with the processed image (at least I've never seen a whitetail with that color fur ). Deer are very unpredictable ... and they're very curious and inquisitive. If there's no hunting allowed in the preserve, that would somewhat explain the lack of fear ... either that or it's a six month old fawn who's never seen a human before (were one or both of the other deer larger?).

Thanks Jay. I reworked the image, with less correction, and now she looks like this. What do you think?

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Nice pictures! Where was that? At Bald Mountain? I was just there hiking today.

nice shot.i took some shots last week and they had the blackish splaches in it did you notice this in your shot.i have never noticed it before in deer and i have hunted for15 yrs.

Brad, Thanks. This was at the West Bloomfield Nature Preserve, which is south of Pontiac Trail and west of Orchard Lake Road.

Scott. Thank you also. I have no idea what the splotches are. This was about the closest for the longest I've ever been to a live deer, so I can't even say I've ever seen that before.

Much better, more natural ... looks nice!

Thanks Jay.

To me, the last one is better contrast, but a touch too blue. Much better though, Ron. Nice shot!

volleybrad, do we know each other? I used to be a power vball junkie 10 years ago!

Hi RS2 , i just saw the original and i must say it is very nice,i think you have oversaturated it a bit. IMHO a bit of contrast and local USM would bring the deer out very nicely.Thats MHO,give it a try anyway and let us know.
Thanks for the reply,you`re a diamond.

And one more thing,the settings i mentioned is all i ever (almost) use on animals and birds.
You can check my thread (Peregrine Falcon) in this forum.