How It Was Made: Konsta Punkka’s Curious Fox
Wildlife photographer Konsta Punkka used the sound of his clicking shutter to get the fox's attention for this eye contact shot.
• October 2020 issue
“It’s actually my all-time favorite fox picture,” says wildlife photographer Konsta Punkka, who captured this image on the second day of observing the animal in a Finnish forest. It was nesting season and he’d learned the paths the fox used to navigate the area. When the fox entered the bushes, he waited for it to reemerge at the other side. “That is the tricky part—to calculate the fox’s movement.”
To capture eye contact, Punkka holds his Nikon D810 away from his body, so he’s not behind the camera, and uses the sound of the first shutter snap to get the animal’s attention. That way, in the next few images, it’s looking straight at the lens. “It’s often just 15 seconds that the animal is interested before it runs away.”
“I just like the expression. He is intensely looking into my camera and is just sort of curious.”
Amanda Arnold is associate editor of Professional Photographer.
