Roe are beautiful and adaptable creatures. This herd is completely wild, with very little human contact, but you can find roe in a lot of towns and cities. A friend of mine in Sweden has a family of roe living outside her window.

Winter changes the landscape. Boggy moors that are impassable in summer become frozen and hard in winter. The snow covers the normal grazing grounds, and the roe move back into the trees for cover. The female roe we’d been tracking, called a doe, was following her mate back into the woods as darkness fell, as we watched them from the edge of a wood higher up on the valley. A few minutes earlier, I’d switched the 600mm for a 200mm, and I fumbled a shot in the cold fading light; my last of the day.

Nick McGowan-Lowe, 30, is a Scottish-based freelance corporate and editorial photographer. He is a moderator of EPUK, a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), and serves on the NUJ’s Freelance Industrial Council, Photographers Committee, Scottish Executive and Copyright Committee. He sits on the board of the British Photographic Council, where he initiated, organised and produced the 2010 British Photographic Council Industry Survey.

Photographer since 1998, EPUK member since 2000.

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