Tuesday, October 13, 2009
On-site hero shots now the norm
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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@roanoke.com
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Mark Taylor
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The Wild Life blog
During the good old days of Virginia deer hunting, the scene was common during the fall.
A hunter, a big whitetail buck in the back of his truck or draped across the hood of his '59 Ford, would pull up to the local newspaper office, from which would emerge an eager staffer with camera in hand.
That week's edition would be full of pictures of proud hunters and their game, the shots sharing space with photos from the big high school football game and maybe the homecoming parade.
As far as the hunting goes, the good old days are now in Virginia, where hunters killed a record quarter million whitetails last season.
But some traditions have faded away, one of them being taking deer to the local paper.
Yet it still happens, and not just at smaller weeklies.
Late one morning last week my phone rang. It was the security guard at a front desk.
"Some guy wants to talk to you," he said. "He's got a deer he wants to show you."
"Got a deer?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said. "It's right out front. I went and checked it out.
"It's a nice one."
Clyde Price had shot the stout eight-pointer with his crossbow the evening before on Bent Mountain. He recovered the deer that morning.
"It's the biggest one I've ever killed," said Price, a 60-year-old who lives in Roanoke. "They said it weighed 210 pounds.
"But I think it weighed 250 when I was hauling it off the mountain."
As it happened I had my camera with me that day, so I was glad to take a picture of Price and his deer.
If I'm here and have my camera I'll do it every time.
But that's no sure bet, especially during deer season when I am out of the office as often as possible doing, um, field research.
The fact that few hunters show up here with deer is reflective of another changing tradition.
Now that excellent digital cameras are widely available and affordable, hunters are willing and able to take their own hero shots.
I think part of what's going on is that hunters can immediately see the results, so they know if they have something decent. In the days of film they had to take the pictures and hope for the best.
Doing your own hero shots is the best option for a number of reasons.
Most important is the setting.
Let's face it, there's only so much you can do with a hunter and deer when the background is the Roanoke Times office or the city's municipal building.
The best shots are taken in the field, ideally at or near the spot of the recovery and ideally not on the back of a truck, on a driveway or on a manicured lawn.
Each picture needs to have a few basic elements.
The hunter and the game -- with tongue tucked in or removed -- are obvious ones. There's nothing wrong with letting the kids or hunting buddies pose for a couple of shots, though its important to have some of the hunter on his own.
The weapon used should be in the picture, too. Obviously, guns need to be unloaded and pointed in a safe direction.
I still cringe when I think about a picture I got a few years ago from a hunter whose muzzleloader was pointed at his own crotch.
In sunny conditions, the sun should be behind the photographer, who needs to be careful not to cast a shadow on the subject.
If it's unavoidable to have the sun behind the hunter, manually turn on the flash to ensure the hunter and deer are properly exposed.
One other trend that's becoming apparent is that a growing number of hunters are following the rules for good hero shots.
Thanks to the wonders of e-mail, I get loads of hero shots every season. The good ones far outnumber the poor ones.
Just like in the old days, some of those shots still end up in the paper.
After all, a paper is supposed to reflect the community it covers, and a good number of people in this community are hunters.
In the old days, some hunters got left out because there was limited room for in the paper.
Now, pictures that don't make the paper still make my Wild Life blog at roanoke.com.
Those pictures are the main reason traffic on the blog always sees a significant increase in the fall, proof that while the way we get hero shots may have largely changed, the fact that lots of people enjoy seeing them in the fall hasn't.
