In the Orchard at Dusk, A Deer Stepped Into Pia’s Frame
(This is the story behind the photograph, a glimpse into the moment, the process, and the vision that brought it to life.)
In the orchard at dusk, Pia pressed the shutter.
Pia Guilmoth had been standing there for a long time, waiting without knowing what might happen. Then a deer walked into the frame, and the scene changed. The picture became more than just an orchard at dusk, it became a meeting between patience and chance. And that is what Pia searches for in her work.
Photography, for her, is not about control but about surrender.
She does not always plan or know what will appear. Sometimes she waits in the dark, sometimes she lets the place itself lead her. Her images grow out of these moments when something unexpected enters the quiet. And that is why each photograph carries a story that feels alive.
Four hours of silence ended in one electric frame.
On a quiet night in New Hampshire, before her move to Maine and before Pia’s transition, Pia found herself returning again and again to her grandfather’s apple orchard. The orchard was a small refuge, a place where she could breathe. Indoors, life felt heavy and crowded. Outside, in the stillness of the trees, she could find a little privacy. The fallen apples scattered across the ground carried a different kind of life too. Each night, just after dark, deer slipped silently from the woods to feed among the trees.
“I hadn’t taken photos in like a long time,” Pia said. “Any excuse to sort of like get out of the house was really important for me just cause I was living in such close quarters with my family. I didn’t have much privacy. And so I would go outside and just sit in my grandfather’s apple orchard. Each night that I was out there, I would notice that a group of deer would always come in through the woods and feed on the apples.”
At first she photographed them casually, with a point-and-shoot. But soon the idea grew: what if she could capture this strange nightly ritual with her large format camera? The challenge excited her, though she knew it meant hours of waiting and little guarantee of success.
She built the setup carefully. A stick in the ground to mark her focus. A pile of crushed apples and peanut butter to draw the deer to one precise spot. The large format camera set on its tripod, ready but unwieldy. And Pia herself, hidden in a ghillie suit, her scent masked by chemical spray, crouched almost invisibly in the dark.
“I put the ghillie suit on and covered myself in Scent Killer and just sat in that spot. I had a string that I rigged up to my camera. I tied this long piece of twine around the shutter and then weighted the camera down so that I could pull the string and it would set the shutter off.”
The first attempts tested her nerves. For three nights, she sat in silence, listening to the slow approach of hooves through the leaves. Her heart pounded too loudly. The deer sensed her unease and bolted when they came within ten feet. Each failure left her more restless, but also more determined.
Finally, on the fourth night, patience was rewarded. She had already been waiting for hours, body stiff inside the suit, when she heard them again. This time the deer came closer, bolder now, curious about the food waiting for them. Pia held still. She couldn’t even turn her head. She could only listen to their careful steps and feel the air shift with their presence.
“As soon as I could feel them next to me, I pulled the shutter and got that photograph,” she recalled. “When the flash went off, they freaked out and ran into the woods.”
The deer disappeared in an instant, but the image remained, captured in silver on the film. Pia wouldn’t see it until weeks later, after she had already moved north. In the darkroom, the negative revealed more than she hoped: three deer, their eyes glinting in the flash, their bodies caught in different states of focus. One sharp, one soft, and another hiding in the shadows behind them. The photograph carried the tension of the moment the sudden collision of control, chance, and wildness.
“I didn’t have super high hopes for that photograph because I wasn’t able to see where the deer were,” she admitted. “So when I developed the photograph, it was like a moment of absolute shock and disbelief… it’s maybe the most thrilling photograph I’ve ever made.”
Most of Pia’s photographs are slow, deliberate, and controlled. They often feel calm, almost staged, as though the world is arranged for the camera. This one was different. The orchard image was built on planning, but also on surrender, on accepting that the decisive moment would belong as much to the deer as to her.
“Usually my photographs are pretty calm and there’s not really many moving or unexpected parts. With that photograph, I had to lose a little bit of control and just rely on chance basically.”
The picture stands as a memory of transition, between places, between stages of life, between control and chance. The apple orchard holds the restless energy of those nights, the boredom, the waiting, the hope for escape. The deer, caught in the flash, seem both startled and eternal, like a secret finally revealed.
In the end, the photograph is not just about deer in an orchard. It is about what happens when patience meets chance, when control gives way to uncertainty, and when a quiet act of waiting brings something wholly unexpected into being.
