When I shot this photo, conditions were quite poor. Light was low, it even started to rain. The deer is in an enclosure. Luckily there is no fence in the photo. I have an old but very decent Nikon Zoom (80 ... 200 mm, 2.8 the whole range, but without VR) which I used at a focal length of 200 mm and an aperture of 2.8. My arms rested on top of the fence just to avoid any move of the camera (I had no tripod with me). My body height (1.80 m) was barely enough for the height of the fence, I had to stay on the tip of my toes. I even used the tiny built-in flash of the D200, just to brighten up the deer a little bit.
At the first upload, the photo got refused, because I did not got the image processing right (the deer was still too dark). I prepared the photo much more carefully for the second try and it got accepted. Now it is my best-selling photo.
Probably I had more luck than know-how. The deer is looking so sad. And the animal has this blade of grass in his mouth. Luckily the deer did not move when I took this photo.
Below are the EXIF data of this photo. You see, this is at the edge of what is possible without VR and tripod.
ApertureFNumber: f/2.8
Make: NIKON CORPORATION
Model: NIKON D200
DateTime: 2009:07:27 14:10:33
ExposureTime: 10/600
FNumber: 28/10
ExposureProgram: 2
ISOSpeedRatings: 100
DateTimeOriginal: 2009:07:01 13:03:44
MaxApertureValue: 30/10
MeteringMode: 5
LightSource: 0
Flash: 5
FocalLength: 2000/10
