The other evening I was out, for some reason without the camera, and witnessed something that I knew was going on from time to time, but usually too far off to do anything useful about. I debated about specifically trying for some pics, which would require a nighttime stakeout, but never got beyond the contemplation stage.
Then tonight, I lucked out a bit.
North American raccoons (Procyon lotor) of course, a mother in the middle with two of her four progeny, who are getting quite big now. What I’d found the other night is that, as long as I didn’t make any distinctly human sounds and kept the headlamp on them (and avoided silhouetting myself against a light behind me,) I could approach reasonably close. ‘Reasonably close’ is like a minimum of eight meters – this is at 135mm and cropped a little – because raccoons can be quite convincing when they want someone to leave. I had been shooting macro and saw the eyes reflecting the headlamp, so I carefully removed the softbox, changed settings on the camera to something more appropriate, and quietly walked closer. Mom suspected something was up and moved into the middle of her young’uns, occasionally standing on her hind legs to see better, but they never panicked or got aggressive. The flash didn’t seem to faze them either, since this is one of six frames that I fired off. I knew that the moment I turned around and shone the light on something behind me, showing the outline of me standing there, they’d be off like a shot.
I might at some point try video, but I’d have to set up the tripod and spotlight them pretty seriously, which may or may not work, and they don’t seem to appear on any particular schedule. We’ll see what happens.