Holedná game reserve

I have to admit, I don’t feel motivated to do any actual photography lately. Mainly because of work, which is quite stressful these days. So I decided to go through my archive again and finally post some pictures from one of my favorite places - Holedná game reserve. I am sure I mentioned it earlier. It is a fairly large piece of woods near the city of Brno, where people can enjoy beautiful nature and if they are lucky or patient even see some awesome animals. You can find there European fallow deer, sika deer or even European mouflon. And of course a variety of birds.

I don’t use any special technique when I shoot there. I mostly just roam around and hope to be lucky. Animals in Holedná are not tamed, but not completely wild either. They are used to people being somewhat around, so they mostly won’t run the moment they see you. If you keep moving slowly and quietly, you can get pretty close and take some nice pictures. Like this male European fallow deer with its gorgeous antlers.

Or this one. Not so impressive, but nice.

I really like to just lurk among the trees and wait to take a shot. I mostly try to capture the moment when the animal notices me. That eye contact adds a bit of something lively to the picture.

They even keep these white deer, which I cannot positively identify. Maybe it is just some fallow deer variant.

Have you ever heard of a decisive moment in photography? Well, it is something like this, when I captured just the very instant, when the deer looks like it wants to murder me. In fact it was just blinking.

I love the deer, however, my most prized photographic trophy from Holedná is this male mouflon below. They are pretty hard to find in there. Maybe they are just more skittish, but I have met them only once in many visits I made to Holedná. The picture itself is a bit faulty. The busy background is distracting and it kinda looks like it doesn't have a leg, but I like the picture anyway.

My other cherished photo is this of a black woodpecker. Once again, it is not very good photograph, but it was hard to get. Wildlife photography is as much about the journey as it is about the end of it. I saw the bird about 50 metres from me and I tried to get closer to it. But every time I got close enough, it just flew away to the next tree. Over and over. This is the most useable picture I took.

If you want to visit Holedná game reserve yourself, you can find it on the map below.

Bits and pieces IV.

Austrian vacation