Five minutes ago (about 9:20 a.m.), in a moment of sunshine through the woods… This photo does not capture how small the fawn was and for that matter, how young and small the doe was! You can see her listening ears, tuned towards the house. The windows were open, I moved for the camera and to check on Karl and those small sounds from inside the house caused them both to stop and check. Karl was napping in the shade, behind the house, just outside the sunroom door as I was at my computer – and he stayed there…oblivious :)!

**Edit… if you saw this post before it said …edited, yes the first photo is slightly different. I had more time late this afternoon to look at everything I took and thought this photo was sharper. So I changed the photo and also cropped the fawn for the following:

Sweet, young thing. This fawn is probably 1/3 the size of Karl to give you perspective. This crop is not the best example of the technique as described below as it is not super sharp…but you can get the idea.

For my fellow photography buffs…I read an article this past week that gave me an idea for something different. The gist of the article by a professional photographer was that he shot almost exclusively with a 35 mm lens, albeit a VERY GOOD 35 mm lens. And then, he cropped what he wanted as subject – this vs a longer zoom. Benefits – a 35mm is a smallish lens compared to a long zoom lens…less obtrusive, easier to carry around. It got me thinking as I’m currently dithering ad naseum about a lens…sold my 70-300 AND my 17-85 and have been using a rental 18-200. While I had the 70-300 and 17-85 combo, I typically used the 17-85 except for macro stuff and for capturing Bob or Karl at a distance. I was thinking about buying the 18-200 but it has some issues at both ends of the range so am now looking at a 15-85…smaller range so typically better through the entire range …with the idea that I can crop a subject if I want the “up close-fill the frame” thing. The trick to this is that the subject must be sharp at full resolution. That said, that is what I do with the moon photos I post – I crop just the moon so it looks “fill the screen” large. So, stay tuned – we’ll see how this works :)!