Saturday Morning Session.
March 28th, 2009
I got together with my good friend, Matt Smythe this morning to do some photography of him in one of my deer hunting stands in Canandaigua. It was an absolutely stunning Spring morning! I picked him up at 7:00 and headed over the hill to the property I hunt during archery season. We saw countless Canada Geese, and probably a dozen deer along our way. It made us wish we were heading out to hunt instead!
I had gone to this location the previous weekend to plan the shot, choose the perspective, and set up my twenty foot climbing stick ahead of time. That accomplished, all we would have to do was find the right morning, get out there and execute the shot. We didn’t have a great deal of time this morning, because I wanted to have the sun low in the sky and behind Matt. He also had commitments later that involved kids, birthday cake and bowling! Fortunately for me, he was gracious enough to carve out some time to get out in the woods first!
Everything came together pretty smoothly. I used my Tree Saddle to get up a little higher than Matt was, and standing on top of the climbing stick, was able to move around some to make some subtle changes in perspective.
After I felt we had accomplished all I had hoped to, we packed up the gear, hiked back to the truck, and did some quick test shots in a couple different locations I plan to use soon.
I got Matt dropped off at his place on schedule, visited with his family for a little bit, and headed back to the woods to walk around for a while and look for shed antlers.
I really hated to leave to come back to the city this afternoon! By the way, Matt, next time, we’ll go out for a proper breakfast afterward!
A huge thank you to Mark Bibbens for making his land accessible for my shoots!
Camera: Canon EOS 1DS Mk 3.
Matt photographed me in the Tree Saddle during a break in the action.
One Response to “Saturday Morning Session.”
1Bev Knopp
May 18th, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
Great shots! A few years ago while taking some “just for the fun of it” photos of a friend during our Kansas whitetail bow season, I realized what a great photo opportunity I had been missing by not getting shots of hunting from tree stands. Although it was just a picture of Jonathan climbing down after retrieving his stand, it is one of my favorite pictures of him. Jonathan changed to rifle hunting our property the next year but he has a friend that will be bow hunting here this fall so I hope to find some unintrusive time to try and capture the feeling of hunting from a tree stand. I look forward to seeing more of your hunting shots.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.