26 Photos Of Roxy The Fox, Whose Life I Observed For 8 Months

In the evenings I set the lights in advance, like in a studio, and waited in the darkened room for my heroine to enter the scene. Working with such an appealing and unpredictable animal, I had to solve many technical, theoretical, and physical challenges, and it was a wonderful opportunity to develop skills and experiment with gadgets.

Working exclusively at night allowed me to get creative with lighting. In some images, I used dramatic, studio-like lighting. In others, I balanced my flashes with ambient light. Working with such an appealing and unpredictable animal at night was both a great challenge and a wonderful opportunity to document the great story.

Half of the pictures were taken by a radio-released remote trigger, and half by a camera trap. This series won first prize at Sony World Photography Awards and first place in the Hungarian PressPhoto contest and thanks to this, Roxy became the world's most-known vixen.

I always wanted to photograph foxes, but I only saw them running across the meadow or on the side of the road at night. My country cottage is in the forest and one night I noticed a fox running under the window. Since then, I watched from the window and noticed that she regularly walks in the yard, since this is also her habitat.

I'm a photographer, so the next day I put out the cameras to see her reaction. She smelled it, but it didn't bother her much. So from there, I started thinking about the scenes, and what should be photographed. Since I didn't know how long she would last, I was in a hurry to capture as many scenes from her life as possible. This and the pursuit of perfection created an addiction that lasted for 8 months. I stopped when I felt that I had accomplished all my ideas and captured everything I saw from her life.

I selected a scene, lit it with two or three flashes, tried to use cinematic lights to give the pictures a fairy-tale feel, and then I sat in the window and waited and prayed for her to pass in front of the camera. I released the camera by radio transmitter and in other cases I used a motion sensor trigger. And if her position wasn't good, or the signal failed, I waited again, sometimes for several days.

I took photos with an SLR camera, or even with two. I combined two flashes and sometimes mood lights as well. I released one camera with a radio controller, and the other was triggered by a motion sensor.

When I went to sleep after midnight, I also switched the other one to a motion sensor. This is why I was so productive. I lit up the entire yard with floodlights to see where the maid appeared. Since it was winter, the cold quarter quickly drained the batteries, so I continuously charged up to 16 batteries at the same time.

It was amazing to see how much she fought her own instincts. She would have come closer because she was curious about me, but instinct wouldn't let her.

The other observation was that she was a wonderful mother. She usually appeared in the yard in cycles of one and a half hours, but when the little ones were born, the cycle became three hours, which means that she spent an hour and a half nursing, and when she appeared in the yard, she was running around in a hurry. And when she started feeding the cubs, her frequency of appearance became 30 minutes, she kept bringing the food to the burrow.

The two things I could advise to other aspiring wildlife photographers are dedication and perseverance. Read a lot about the subject to get to know the details of his/her life, or about the phenomena. Look on the internet to see what has been done on the subject, if you are a beginner, copy it, and if you are advanced, try to make something better and different from what you have seen. And don't be afraid to elaborate, be creative with the light and the composition. If you have all of these, you will be lucky.