As an amateur wildlife photographer I have always struggled to find opportunities to shoot the most interesting subjects, thinking surely that would be what everyone noticed about my pictures. However, most everywhere I went I would find deer and I would shoot them as well. The summer of ‘96 I did an internship at Wolf Park, working with… yep, wolves, I had a fairly constant flow of wolf pictures. In the year 2000, I moved to NY and got a job as a zoo keeper at the Utica Zoo, lots of fascinating animals. Everywhere I went though, I would see those white tailed deer and take their pictures. I have long been frustrated by the ability of random people to pick up a pile of my wolf photos and thumb half heartedly though them and stop suddenly, transfixed on a photo of a deer.
Recently, I set up an account on Red Bubble to start to showcase the Great Blue Heron photos I was working on getting this summer. Well, as usual I bumped into my deer friends and as usual I photographed them. When I put them up on my site an interesting thing happened, my first deer picture got featured in a group! I was frustrated at first, why don’t people just notice what I’m working on instead of the deer? I have now come to the conclusion that I take those pictures because I see the beauty right off the bat, and somehow I am lucky enough to catch that sometimes (I actually do have a lot of bad deer photos to) and that is what people see. I am now working on using the deer photos to garner interest in myself as an artist and hope that they will look at my other stuff as well. The point is, if you have a skill other than what you want to be known for, leverage it and don’t despise it.
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