Deer in Winter

Image No. YNP0101: Deer in Winter.  Nikon FE2, Nikkor 75-150mm lens, Kodachrome 64. Image specs: 3350 x 2226 pixels, 8.1 MB file size.

In the mid-1980s, on a car-camping road trip in a Toyota station wagon, my friends and I seemed to be the only visitors in Yellowstone that day.  Somehow we were able to drive through the park on snow-covered roads that would be closed to the public these days.  Driving slowly along the Yellowstone River, we came upon this herd of deer, and we stopped to take this photograph as quietly as possible, so as not to disturb the dead-quiet of the scene and scare the wildlife.  It’s the oldest photograph in this website, shot with a Nikon film camera, before autofocus was invented.