One criteria I have for Photo of the Year is capturing something I haven't gotten before. There are 371 bighorn sheep images on the site, 52 this year, and a couple of those were contenders. My favorite was a ram sitting on top of a cliff behind the Custer State Park Visitor's Center. I have 508 bald eagle images, but (can this be right?) none this year! I got a turtle rolling in the surf in Hawaii, that was unique, but it didn't make the cut. The three official runners-up were a hawk on my back fence in January, a Michigan butterfly in September, and the annular eclipse of the sun in October.

The winner is this fox I surprised on April Fool's day. I saw it hunting voles in the yard so I got my 5D Mark III and 300mm lens and headed out to the garage. I was ready to shoot as I opened the back door and got this shot. By the time I squeezed off another one a second later, the fox had already dropped the vole, turned, and was running away. The exposure of 1/800, f4.5 and ISO 400 was slightly dark, and the automatic white balance was completely wrong as it turned the snow very blue. Fortunately, since I've been shooting RAW instead of JPG for the past 21 years, those were minor problems that were easily solved in Photoshop LE.

It hasn't been determined yet what my prize is for Photo of the Year. The three possibilities are the traditional prize of a trip to Keokuk, Iowa to see the eagles; a drive to the Black Hills/Badlands; or a snow coach tour through Yellowstone. Or maybe all three. Click here to see all previous Photo of the Year winners back to 1999, or click on the image to see a larger version of the fox.

Photo of the Year - Backyard fox

Rough-legged Hawk

Michigan Butterfly

Annular Eclipse