Photography Adventure: Flashing Deer

There is a small group of people who like to go to the park at sunset to watch the deer come out and feed. We call ourselves the JB Social Club (JB is for Jefferson Barracks Park). If you've tried to get pics of deer before, you know they come out in low light so it can be a challenge to get good pics of them.

One night I was testing out a Promaster flash on a Canon 10D so I hung around at the park until after dark. Park rangers frown on being in the park after dark so I had to hope they wouldn't catch me. I watched the deer disappear into the field as their camoflage and the low light combined to make them almost invisible. I creeped up as close as I could without making a sound and prepared to shoot from the edge of the tall grass. The grass provided some camo for me so the deer didn't run off. They were still pretty far away, and I wasn't sure if the flash would go that far, but I had to give it a try. I thought that I'd get only one chance at this because I fully expected them to run once the flash fired.

Attempting to focus, I discovered that the camera couldn't focus in total darkness. That may sound like a given, but the owners manual said that it should be able to do this using the infrared sensor. Eventually I gave up on getting it to focus and just hoped for the best. I took the shot and the flash fired. I could see in the review that it wasn't in focus, and the deer were to far away for a good shot anyway. But to my total amazement, when I stared out into the field I could make out the shape of the deer. I thought my eyes were deceiving me because not only had they not fled, they appeared to be closer. Totally excited, I got ready to try again. Again the camera wouldn't focus, I fired, and again, the deer actually came closer. They seemed to be fascinated by the flash. I repeated this until the deer were so close I could almost reach out and touch them. I had one more chance and as I zoomed out to try to fit one into the frame (they were so close the 28-135 lens was suddenly almost to big), I noticed one of the deer move to the left, in an arc. I couldn't take my eye off the one directly in front of me to see what the other deer was up to. I fired again. This time the deer that had ventured off, saw my human sillouette and stomped her foot. All the deer scattered.

That was an amazing close encounter with wild animals. I was disappointed in the pictures, as the camera never did focus correctly and it was to dark to manually focus. After that I borrowed a friends' Canon flash and tested it in total darkness and guess what, the camera focused correctly with the Canon flash. The Promaster flash worked fine under normal lighting conditions but I traded it for a Canon flash since I need the night focus feature to work for me.

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