In Plain Sight
Our vulpine friends in the wild are curious, but cautious woodland creatures. While you may see a fox in the wild, it would be rare to be able to walk up as close as I actually was to this one within the WNC Nature Center. You can see, even though I was a distance away, the fox was well aware of my presence, I happened to be ready to get my photo as I walked up, her eye open and watching to see if we may yet be a threat. I almost didn’t see her at all curled up in the leaves behind the brush, a place she could watch and not be seen, hiding in plain sight.
Bonita, the other three legged fox at the WNC Nature Center eluded me in my previous trip. This time however I managed to get a lovely shot of her, a lovely moment in time captured with the assistance of the staff of the Center itself. They gave me a walk around, and explained the conditions of their animals, and what they do to ensure they are happy, well looked after, and treated. The animals at the Nature Center cannot go back into the wild, either because they had never learned, or because of injuries received in the wild and the treatment required to keep them alive, and healthy. I believe I mentioned previously, but both of the foxes they keep lost a limb to a hunters snare, and during their rehabilitation it became clear they wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild any longer. Support your local wild life sanctuaries!
The edit here was fairly simple. I added a bit of highlighting, and countered that light with some shadows opposed to it, highlighted the subject, while dragging the background down. The difficult part for this shot was really finding a framing device for the scene. The leaves you see in the foreground are only in a few locations, so I had a few options, this one felt the best, and so we have a bit of color diversity in the frame. Finally, we brightened the eye, it was in complete shadow, so we brought out the color as best we could. All in all, I think this came out splendidly.
Aperture: f7.1
ISO: 640
SS: 1/320th
Focal: 400mm
Fujinon 100-400mm
