A thick blanket of quietness has descended to envelope my entire neighbourhood. The street just outside my living room windows, normally busy and lively with buses, cars, and shoppers, has become eerily silent. My ears, so used to the constant humming of hustle and bustle of high street noise, are funnily alerted by the lack of it one December night.

‘It can’t be.’ I whispered to myself as I approached a different window in my flat facing the back garden to open the tightly closed curtains. There right in front of my eyes, instead of the usual darkness, a brightened view of the garden appeared, lit by the street light reflected off the surface of the freshly fallen snow delicately coating the ground.

Dry, powdery snow flakes kept on falling from the sky as if someone had switched on a giant ice shaver high above. The only difference is that normally in the south, snow flakes tend to melt the moment they touch the ground, whereas tonight the air is so dry and glacial that each snow flake retains their shape for far longer, creating layers and layers of snow on the ground in a short period of time.

Although the pragmatist in me worried about potential travel disruptions I might suffer as I was still meant to travel for business then, soon the apprehension was replaced by innocent excitement over how the landscapes and animals I photograph locally could be transformed to look as though they existed somewhere in the Scottish highlands! Without making the trip that is.

The sub-zero temperatures seemed to linger in the south of the U.K., not showing any sign of going away for another week or so. Each morning as I started the engine before sunrise, the gauge said -4 degrees Celsius. Having once unintentionally swung the rear end of my car on a wet road, I knew I would have to be extra careful. The tarmac had this look of heavy steel with frosty diamond dust sprinkled all over it slightly shimmering and sparkling when it catches the dim beam from the street lights.

Once inside the park, the temperature gauge dropped even more. But my eyes could have easily told that. The familiar contours of the hills, woods, and grasslands merged as one as if someone with a heavy hand had dusted the entire park with icing sugar.

I was early to arrive in the park and it was still before sunrise but I realised I’ve made one mistake - I underestimated the difficulty of spotting my main subject, the red deer. Red deer vs white snow, it sounds pretty easy but alas there was none within sight.

I had to walk deeper and deeper into the centre of the park, checking each woods as the grasslands seemed to have been deserted by them for lack of cover. But in so doing I relished the joy of walking in the fresh dry snow. Your steps didn’t seem to have any effect on their appearance. It just simply gets kicked from one place to another and it just sits in the new place without any trace of it being kicked by a dirty boot. As I amuse my middle-aged self with such a childlike fascination, two young bucks appeared in the snow engaged in a play fight. Nearby a slightly more grown up stag took a notice of me and alerted the youngsters. The above is the shot when it happened.

This was shot when the first ray of the rising sun was meekly piercing through, providing a very faint orangey glow in the bokeh balls in the top-centre background. As I never photographed wild animals in the snow in London, I honestly didn’t know what sort of look I was after. It was as though I had to have a shot to go with each intensity, colour, and angle of the sun to know what I would like after the shoot. This made my steps faster. But where are the other herds? This vague sense that it might be too late when I finally find them made my nerves worse. Then in the nearby woods I was alerted by the rattling sound of antlers clashing.

Can you see the snow flakes flying about in the air disturbed by the stags’ antlers? I am also fascinated by the two-tone colour temperatures contained in this single frame - a stronger blue tone in the lower half, and warmer tone more dominant in the upper half. It is not down to some clever post rendition on my part at all. The woods in the background was lit by the sun, and the bucks in the foreground remained in the shade. Hence this interesting colour temperature phenomenon. Normally in photography, a picture can be either more blue (colder) or yellow (warmer) but not both.

As the sun gained height, more individuals from the herd were enticed to a nearby open field as if drawn by the sun’s magical power. And during a very brief break during their play fight, a pair of young stags paused as if they had to admire the gentle, low winter sun.

I decided to head back to the park for two more days, too, with no specific photographic idea in mind, but just wanting to find more beauty I hadn’t seen. The air must have changed somewhat though, as this gentle diffused glow I captured on the first day was never repeated. But it was still captivating to witness how our lowland red deer behaved in the freezing temperatures, surrounded by still intact frost all over. There was even a moment of tenderness, too.

As numerous successful professional photographers claim, truly dazzling photography is all about how to use light. As long as you get the lighting right, the location or subject can be as common as muck. I vaguely knew that and thought I understood it but not until the day I photographed the red deer in the snow. Of course I don’t mean to underplay the majestic beauty of the red deer or Richmond Park with that expression but I hope you get what I mean. Although I will never say no to the grand scale of African photo safari or an exotic expedition in a remote location for something new and different, endeavouring to find beauty and surprising moments nearer to home and being rewarded in the process gives me immense pleasure and satisfaction.

A true jewel for me.

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