Rare shot of a pika chosen as Wildlife Photo of the Year

Amid an alpine landscape of rocks and boulders, it sounded as though somebody was hiding in a crevice and squeezing a squeak toy.

A wildlife photographer from Berkeley, Jen Joynt, tuned in to the squeak. She knew what it was. The scene that evolved ended when she took the photograph that won Wildlife Photo of the Year from the state magazine Outdoor California and the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

That squeak was the call of a pika,” Joynt said. “The key is to learn their call, and then you just have to be patient. If you hear them calling, you know they’re there. You usually will be rewarded. They stick their neck out and you can see them call.”

This was in the high country of Yosemite National Park last summer, when Joynt ventured to Gaylor Lake at an elevation of 10,050 feet. The landscape turns to rock, where the pika, a cute mouse-like critter, often seem to play hide-and-go-seek with wilderness explorers and sound like squeak toys.

“Pika are a particularly vexing subject to photograph because they are so fast,” Joynt said. “They live in the rocks, above the tree line, 9,000 to 14,000 feet in the high alpine.”

Joynt homed in on the calls, and in the process, set up her camera, a Nikon D700 with a 300mm lens, and then waited. A pika, with several blades of grass in its mouth, then emerged on a rock and perched as if on alert for a few seconds. It was long enough. Joynt focused and pushed the button. The rare shot was a winner.

Shots ‘that jump out at you’

Anybody is eligible to enter the state’s annual wildlife-photo contest. Quarterly winners are published in Outdoor California, and the judges include editor Troy Swauger and Bob Kingman of the Sierra Conservancy, which, in part, sponsors the award.

Swauger noted that Joynt also won an honorable mention for a photo of a juvenile fox at Point Reyes National Seashore. “She has an ability to capture cute,” he said.

Among the hundreds of outstanding entries, he said, judges look for photos “that jump out at you.”

“I’ve never found a formula that says a photo’s going to be a winner,” Swauger said. “The first standard is ‘eyes in focus,’ that’s a key.”

The other finalists were Gary Kunkel for his photo of a hawk in flight, Beth Savidge for her photo of a feeding river otter, Sandrine Scherson for her photo of egrets in fog, and Joynt, a second time, for her photo of the juvenile fox at Point Reyes.

For that shot, Joynt said, she had to take off on three trails at Point Reyes National Seashore, including Muddy Hollow and Limantour, and covered 10 miles before heading up Sky Trail toward Sky Camp and Inverness Ridge.

“It was getting toward end of the day, and I hadn’t seen much of anything,” Joynt said. “I turned the corner, and I saw that little fox. I said, ‘Oh my God, it’s so adorable,’ and my heart started beating. I set up and the little fox actually walked toward me.

Getting the shot

“It was complete luck that my camera was ready, already dialed in, and I had a monopod for stability. The little fox was so cute, and it literally trotted toward me and then went into the bushes.”

She captured an example of what the great photographer Galen Rowell, also from Berkeley, called “unrepeatable moments.”

On Thursday, Joynt was honored in a ceremony at the state Capitol. “I feel grateful for all these special places you can go in California to look for these animals,” she said.

Swauger recommended always carrying a camera, because you never know when a wildlife encounter will occur. At the same time, he reminded about the challenge of the photographer’s ethic that says your behavior cannot affect the behavior of your subject.

Lots of worthy entries

“Wildlife photographers are the experts,” he said. “They know the animals, their habits. And they know that they, as photographers, are as much of nature as their photographs.”

He estimated that 30 or 40 entries were good enough to win. “They’re all so good,” Swauger said of judging the contest. “It’s like a wave coming over you.

“You wonder how they do it,” he said. “I go out shooting, and you realize the patience these people have, the ability to sit and that they become nature to get that wildlife photograph. It is amazing to look at life through a lens, and when they finally see it, they capture it.”

Outdoor California is available for $15 for six issues per year, $12 for renewals. It’s available at www.wildlife.ca.gov/Publications — then click on “Outdoor California.” Year in, year out, it’s one of the best things that the DFW does.

Resource: http://www.sfgate.com