In a quiet corner of a garden…

… a young fox squeezes through a scrape under a fence to forage. 

It can be a long process to get the photo you ‘visualised’ from a camera trap.  It’s partly about the animal behaving how you hoped and putting themselves in the right place and then being precisely in the focus zone you set.  It’s also about learning exactly where to set the infra red detection trigger point for the camera and then hoping that five pieces of equipment are all working in concert to actually take the picture.  When it all comes together it’s really rewarding because the image here of a fox slinking under the fence was exactly the image I’ve been aiming for.  

Add to this that this image was taken using only infrared illumination in complete darkness (hence the black and white image because there is no normal colour here).  What makes me particularly happy is that the fox was completely unfazed and didn’t flinch (our foxes are very skittish) at all having a camera and two flashguns firing within 3’ of it.  I know this because the shot was also monitored by a small video camera trap (also IR) and I could see the IR flash firing as the fox slipped quickly under the fence and into the garden without hesitation. 

And then uses the same scrape to exit a while later.

Gear: I’ve talked about this IR photography project in a previous post - A Shot in the Dark