Pennsylvania Game News - June 2010 - 58

photo with an inexpensive disposable camera. Your life, however, will be a whole lot simpler if you get a digital camera. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A simple credit card-sized point-and-shoot will do just fine. The primary reason you’ll want a digital is it eliminates the need for film processing and all the expense, hassles and headaches that go along with it. Lose all photographic evidence of one trophy buck because the kid at the drugstore overexposed your film by accident, and you’ll never shoot film again. Digitals also are better because they allow you to review the photos you shoot. You’ll know if your thumb was in the way, or if the hunter had his or her eyes closed when the camera clicked. You can check a shot to see if you like it, and if you don’t, you’ll know it right away and you can fix what’s wrong and shoot again. Once you have a camera, you’re ready to start shooting. To produce a good quality photo, there are four basic elements photographers need to pay attention to — background, presentation, perspective and lighting. All are connected and dependent on one another as you set up your shot. Remember, the camera is just a tool. Think about how you want the photo to

look and then manipulate the four basic elements of a photo to create the image you want. Don’t count on the camera to do anything other than capture the image you set up. If the background is busy, the camera won’t clear it up. If a hunter’s hand is obscuring part of a buck’s rack, the camera isn’t going to magically change that.

BACKGROUND A good background is one that provides a sense of place without diverting attention away from the hunter and the deer. A deer is a wild animal that deserves to be photographed outdoors, on the ground. Photographers, get the deer out of the garage or butcher shop, out of the back of the pickup, and put it on the ground. For my money, the best place to photograph a deer is as near to the spot where you shot it as possible. That’s the area you want to be reminded of 30 years from now. Take heed, however. Naturally, a lot of deer are shot in wooded settings. That’s a tricky place to find a background that’s not “busy” — full of saplings, brush and shadows that tend to absorb a hunter and deer in photographs. With luck, you can likely find a spot that allows you to set up with good light on the hunter and deer, and with a neutral background, such as a A GOOD QUALITY PHOTO of a deer taken with a bow and arrow couple of pines with is critical to preserving the memory of the hunt for a lifetime. thick, green boughs. Look for a place where you can set the hunter and deer and have several yards of vegetationfree space behind them. Distance helps separate the subjects from the background in a 2dimensional image. Whenever possible, I like to get on the crest of a hill so
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Pennsylvania Game News - June 2010

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