A Canadian physician has won a prestigious international photography competition for his stunning image of two foxes in the wilds of Churchill, Manitoba.
Dr. Don Gutoski, an accident and emergency doctor from Ontario, was named 2015 Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Natural History Museum in London, England last week.
Gutoski’s winning image, “A Tale of Two Foxes,” depicts a red fox dragging the carcass of a white arctic fox. It beat out more than 40,000 entries to win the 51-year-old contest.
Gutoski said it was “surreal” to be named the grand title winner at a reception in London.
“I knew I was the category winner of the mammal category, and beyond that, everything was gravy,” Gutoski told CTV’s News Channel on Sunday. “And I had no idea I was going to win until they announced my name at the end of the evening.”
It was an image that took three hours in -30 C temperatures to nab. Gutoski was in Wapusk National Park, at Cape Churchill, one day last November when he came upon a red fox.
Gutoski said that as he got closer, he saw that the animal “had obviously killed an arctic fox and was feeding on it.”
He continued to monitor the animal for three hours, until the fox picked up the carcass and dragged it away to store for later.
“It just started taking the remains away, and that’s when I happened to get this photograph,” Gutoski said.
Using a high-powered telephoto lens, Gutoski ended up snapping approximately 2,000 photographs of the fox encounter.
But when he saw the winning photograph, he knew immediately that it was “the one.”
“The ones before it and after just didn’t measure up, and this just happened to be the one image that told the story,” Gutoski said.
He says he plans to enter the contest again in the future.
“I’ll enter again, but I won’t give up my day job, that’s for sure,” Gutoski said with a laugh.
