A beautiful little fox

This is a fennec fox I photographed in Morocco. My photo tour group was driving on a highway, and we passed a young boy holding the very young kit. It was now obviously a pet, and the boy was making a little money from tourists who wanted to take pictures. I had my driver stop the van to take advantage of this very cool photo opportunity, but it turned out the fox was constantly in motion. I tried to get a shot of it on the ground, but holding focus was simply impossible. It was just too fast. So, thinking outside the box, I came up with a plan. I had a piece of black velvet with me that I use as a backdrop for portraits. I asked the boy to put the fabric on his head, and then he held the fox on top of that. I took some shots, and then I looked for a rock to use as a foreground – in other words, as a component to block the boy’s hands and to hide the fact that my subject wasn’t really standing on the ground. I found one, and then later in Photoshop I composited the rock in place. This was the best I could do given a tough situation. I used a 100-500mm zoom set to 254mm, and the camera settings were 1/800, f/7.1, and 160 ISO.