Red evening
- 📍 Location: Croissy-sur-Seine, Yvelines, France
- 📅 Date: 2023
A fox walking the grass bank at the edge of the water near Croissy-sur-Seine, at the end of the day, when the light no longer falls on the landscape but along it. The animal is in profile, moving from right to left, low to the ground, with the whole weight of his tail behind him.
The framing places him on the horizontal line where the mown grass meets the darker vegetation, so his back draws a straight line across the picture and the movement reads as a glide. I stayed at his level, close to the ground, which is the only way to give a fox his true silhouette; photographed from standing height, he becomes a dog, and everything that makes him a fox is lost.
The light is the last of the sun, red and almost horizontal. It ignites the guard hairs of the shoulder and the flank and leaves the background entirely in shadow, which is why the animal seems lit from inside. There is no fill, no reflector, nothing added, only a coat that was designed by evolution for exactly this hour.
Foxes come out at dusk because everything they hunt comes out at dusk, and the photographer who wants them has to accept the worst light of the day and make it the subject rather than the obstacle.
I wanted a print with almost no colour in it except that one, and an animal who owns the last minutes before the night.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
