Monday, 26-Dec-11 21:21:00 CET

Boxing Day 2011 Photo Hunt, Oostvaardersplassen

Today the weather was nice around 12 °C (about 52 °F) and not so windy and sometimes a weak sun was visible. I decided to go for a peaceful hunt to score a photo of a great mammal in the Oostvaardersplassen, a 56 km² (22 mi²) nature reserve near Almere. You cannot go to the inner parts of the park as you like but you can visit the park on a few places at the border.

I went to a place called the “deer path”, a forest at the border of Oostvardersplassen park, at the side near to Almere.

“I am a photographer” is a statement only to be falsified by being able to produce a number of attractive photos of various motives and situations. With enthusiasm I went into this challenge and soon enough a red deer caught my attention.

So how do you proceed in such situation? Well I had figured out that it would be good to be quiet. So I made the camera ready but I was first uncertain about what setting was the best. I had set the camera to manual photography on the dial of the camera. The symbol for this is ‘M’. It was not overly light in the forest so I had set to ISO 800 light sensitivity. Before I went I had been holding a tele-converter in my hand but decided that it is probably too dark for it so these photos are taken with the 55 – 300 lens. Indeed, it had been to dark and I was glad I had not to remove the tele-converter with a red deer in front of me.

Higher ISO values give more picture noise so ISO 800 had to be good. I wanted to have a big aperture because I wanted the gorgeous fuzzy background so the f value was low, f5.6. The risk is that the motive is swallowed by that background but hey, this was the challenge! I had the shake reduction turned on. There were so many trees in that forest you cannot possibly leave it to the camera processor to decide where the focus should be. It is a lot to think about there on that moment. I had forgotten to turn on the multi shutter mode so had to take one photo, release and take the next. Irritating.

I could spot a heard of red deer. And yes, they could spot me too turning dials and fixing and doing stuff with my camera. I also had my new tripod but that was inconvenient in this light condition. Luckily I stopped annoying the animals with the tripod before I had a chance to make any picture of them. I could see the entire herd passing the path I was standing on.

A couple of minutes later I were standing with a view over group of wild Konik horses. They are Polish horses from origin that are said to be as near you can come the original extinct European wild horse.