--- description: As shooting season begins across the country, TIME looks at one photographer's series on hunting blinds. title: Jesse Burke's photographs of hunting stands. image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta9c1eec34a8cc7cc/69879a04428a9ef2d4cc87e7/hay_hill_3469_2010.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [World](/section/world/) ## World Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [LightBox](/tag/time-section-lightbox/) ## LightBox Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # In a Lonely Place: Jesse Burke's Deer Stands by [Nate Rawlings](/author/nate-rawlings/) ## Nate Rawlings Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Nov 9, 2011 9:00 AM CUT  Hay Hill 3469, 2010 Hay Hill 3469, 2010Jesse Burke by [Nate Rawlings](/author/nate-rawlings/) ## Nate Rawlings Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Nov 9, 2011 9:00 AM CUT Drive through rural areas of many parts of the country, really keep your eyes peeled—and you just might see them. Some call them a deer stand or a blind, camouflaged structures where men sit in isolation, waiting for the animal, usually a deer, they are hunting. You have to seek out hunting blinds, because, by design, they’re supposed to remain hidden. Photographer Jesse Burke sought to drag these assemblies back from the nature where hunters hide them. “I was definitely isolating them from their environment, which flips the whole concept of the deer blind, which is to blend in,” Burke says. “I wanted to see man’s feeble attempt at camouflaging themselves into this world.” Burke traveled to a thousand-acre hunting farm in South Carolina and another hunting ground in Maine for the series. They’re boys clubs, where older generations of men teach their sons and grandsons how to hunt. “For me the stands are about a lot of things, especially the concept of domination and power,” he says. “Part of the hunting process is man’s dominance and power over nature. But they’re also these places of isolation. You go there by yourself. So it touches on all these different topics for me: power, dominance, isolation.” Burke drove around the massive preserves with a map, trying to locate each one. He shot them around sunset, illuminated only with his hiking headlamp, using a tripod and 2-minute exposures. “What I see with my eyes versus what I see with the headlamp versus what I get on my image in the camera are sometimes three takes on the same scene,” he explains. “There are some really beautiful things that occur–the wind blows and motion occurs so the branches are blurry; the camouflage tarp is waving in the wind. Some things I didn’t expect to happen, but I had to embrace \[them\].” While he sought to bring the blinds back from nature and show them from the point of view of the hunted animal, Burke ultimately learned that taking photographs involves embracing the natural situation as much as it does setting the conditions for the shot he wanted. “It’s such a controlling sort of practice,” he says of photography. “I just found I had to let go. Some things are dictated to me, like the full moon. The result is always more beautiful when I give in and let nature take its course.” _Jesse Burke is a photographer based in Rumford, Rhode Island. His monograph,_ [Intertidal](http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?catalog=ZD467 "undefined")_, was published by Decode Books in 2008, and his photographs have appeared in publications such as_ ESPN_,_ Vogue España _and_ W _magazine. See more of his work_ [_here_](http://www.jesseburke.com/ "undefined")_._ _Nate Rawlings is a reporter at_ TIME_. Find him on Twitter at_ [_@naterawlings_](http://twitter.com/#%21/naterawlings "undefined")_._  Hay Hill 3109, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 2991, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 3453, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 3484, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 3469, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 3496, 2010 Jesse Burke  Stack 0142, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 0137, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 0136, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 0155, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 2987, 2010 Jesse Burke  Hay Hill 0142, 2010 Jesse Burke ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3782844/in-a-lonely-place-jesse-burkes-deer-stands/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3782844/in-a-lonely-place-jesse-burkes-deer-stands/"},"headline":"In a Lonely Place: Jesse Burke's Deer Stands","datePublished":"2011-11-09T09:00:49.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:41:19.242Z","description":"As shooting season begins across the country, TIME looks at one photographer's series on hunting blinds.","url":"https://time.com/3782844/in-a-lonely-place-jesse-burkes-deer-stands/","keywords":["LightBox","hunting","Fine Art","South Carolina","documentary photography","photo essay"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta9c1eec34a8cc7cc/69879a04428a9ef2d4cc87e7/hay_hill_3469_2010.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nate Rawlings","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/nate-rawlings/"}],"articleSection":"World","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta9c1eec34a8cc7cc/69879a04428a9ef2d4cc87e7/hay_hill_3469_2010.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Hay_Hill_3469_2010","caption":"Hay Hill 3469, 2010","creditText":"Jesse Burke","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-lightbox/","name":"LightBox"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3782844/in-a-lonely-place-jesse-burkes-deer-stands/","name":"In a Lonely Place: Jesse Burke's Deer Stands"}}]}] ```