Had My Camera; Saw a Deer (Day 20 of 31)
I had my camera in my hand. It was twilight time. I was in a brushy sort of meadow area a few miles from home, taking pictures of a dead tree with long, interesting branches. Suddenly a deer reared up—a large buck, snorting at me and leaping in place. (Deer ordinarily seem so gentle, but this thing was seriously frightening.)
It’s the kind of unusual situation I love, far more fascinating than the tree I’d come there to photo. I was holding my camera at that moment. So how many photos was I able to get? You guessed: zero.
It just happened so quickly; the deer reared up intimidatingly, not far at all from where I was standing, and it made itself so big and was acting truly ferocious. The noises it was making—I’m not kidding; I was scared, and not just because it had startled me.
We miss all kinds of great shots over the course of a lifetime. That day I learned that you can miss them even when you’re right there in the moment, actually taking pictures at the time! But it was such a brief moment—five seconds, perhaps? Not much more. The deer snorted with rage a couple more times, then spun around and disappeared into the woods past the meadow.
(The deer pictured in today’s entry isn’t the one I’m talking about. It’s a deer that wandered into my backyard on a different day.)
It was a great moment, one I often think of when I drive by the spot. No photo captured it, but that’s okay; I have the memory.
(For the month of October 2017, I’m participating in the 31 Days bloggers’ challenge. You can find out about it here, and check out the interesting work other bloggers are posting.)