We prize eye contact in wildlife photography. It’s just part of how we’re wired. Eye contact demands reciprocation, pulling you into the scene and making you feel more connected with the subject.
Unfortunately, eye contact often means the subject is reacting to the photographer. Often when there’s direct eye contact in a photo of a wild mammal, you’ll noticing it’s standing still, trying to decide whether to flee or perhaps looking back to see if it’s being pursued. I’ve posted shots like that. I try my best, though, to minimize my impact on my photographic subjects, approaching them slowly and carefully so that I can get shots where they’re behaving naturally instead of reacting to me. If I capture them looking at something in my general direction, I can still create a feeling of connection, but also invite the viewer to wonder what’s caught the animal’s attention.
In this case, you can tell that the Coyote is walking towards me. This is my favorite interaction. The Coyote is aware of me, giving me a glance to make sure I don’t turn into a threat, but for now has concluded I’m just an odd feature of its habitat that it can safely bypass. For me, the moment is at once exhilarating and slightly terrifying, because I’m lying prone near its path, trusting that as long as I stay still, the Coyote will remain at worst indifferent to my presence.