Another Contest Win – and a Secret

One of the advantages of being in my newsletter “club” is that you have access to some of the dirty little secrets that sometimes accompany my images. Yep, it’s true – not everything in my image gallery is exactly what it seems. But first let’s talk about the contest.

I seem to be on a bit of a roll here, with two contest wins back to back. Now I haven’t actually won a single thing from either one, but it’s nice to get the recognition.

This contest was run by the Naturalists of the Seattle Mountaineers. No, I did not say Naturist – that’s something different. It’s important to get this distinction straight, and since this is supposed to be an educational blog, you can read up on that subject here; but be careful, as this Wiki is neither kid friendly nor work-safe. You’ve been warned.

Anyway, the Naturalists needed images for their 2013 An Introduction to the Natural World course brochure, so I submitted a few pics. My Doe on Hurricane Ridge was one of the winners, and can be seen on the left in the brochure. And while we’re on the subject, this is an excellent course which yours truly has actually taken.

So what about the secret? Well, it’s just that I didn’t set out to create an image of this majestic animal surveying the gorgeous scenery around Hurricane Hill at dusk. Not exactly. What happened was that after photographing this deer in the boring parking lot for about 20 minutes, and after having had to retrieve another Mountaineer photographer’s hiking poles from its jaws (they like the salt in the wrist straps), I was pretty much done with this girl. In fact, I was looking the other way when fellow photographer Scott McLain thumped me on the shoulder and said something like, “Hey Ed, you have a long lens, get a shot of this!”. So I turned around and saw this:

Yes, she’s taking a leak. Well, what are you going to do? Click…click…click! And eventually, she stood up and I got the image that graces the Mountaineers brochure.

Do you think I’ll be disqualified if they find out? I guess it’s too late for that!