Jim Salge Photography Blog

How to shoot a fox…

I would like to thank all of the followers of my photography and this blog for the great comments, questions and correspondence that I received in response to my series with the foxes at Carter Notch this past weekend. One question that I received a few times is HOW?! And not just how did I stumble across the foxes, but how I actually took the shot. Well, here goes.

There are a few places in the White Mountains that are known to attract foxes. The summit of Mount Washington, a few of the AMC Huts, the Cog Base Station all have fairly consistent resident populations. The foxes in these locations are fairly tolerant of humans, as part of their diets there are enhanced in three likely ways. First off, these foxes do feed directly on dropped scraps, inadvertent or otherwise, but I do hope it’s mainly inadvertent. Secondly, crumbs and scraps attract rodent populations that feed the foxes, and thirdly, the heat shelter of the building naturally invites more rodents.  Working with these tolerant populations is helpful, as though they are still wild and skittish, they are also curious, and you can usually get fairly close.

This round of shots was made possible when a student of mine on the hike let me know that the foxes were had dug up some discarded (not by our group) fruit loops outside of the bunk houses. The kids were on the porch taking pictures themselves, and I began sneaking around the side of the bunkhouse. My sneaking methods is a cross between a crawl and slither in very slight movements.

The camera had been set for my landscape shooting, and needed adjustment. I knew that a fast shutter speed would be necessary to capture the images hand-held without any motion blur. I ripped off my trusty filters, leaving them in the snow, dialed up the ISO to 400, and put the camera on burst mode, so I can fire off more than one shot per push of the trigger. Next I put the camera on aperture priority, and locked it wide open (F/6.3 on my Sigma 18-200mm hiking lens). This allowed for shutter speeds of around 1/1000 of a second.

Once the camera was set, it was all about position, background and composition. I tried to maneuver myself so that the fox was between me and a good background. This fine subject allowed me to capture him for about 10 minutes, at distances as close as about 20-25 feet. The session ended when he came in too close, I made a movement too sudden, and off he went.

In that time, I fired off about 50 frames. Some, the focus was off, some the composition was off and many more had awkward poses or looks. I think about four of the fifty are usable. Below is one more of the usable examples, and it needed some cropping to square to balance out an otherwise off composition.

Hope y’all find this helpful, and I’m always happy to answer questions.