22 Nov ROUND UP: SNAPSHOT

It’s rare, as a photographer, to take an image that you immediately know is once in a lifetime. But on a bitterly cold day in February of 2023, that’s exactly what happened.

While trudging through snow deep in Yellowstone National Park, a flash of white against a dark gray cliff caught my eye. I looked up and my brain struggled for a second to understand what I was seeing: an ermine climbing a crack in the cliff more than 20 feet off the ground.

The object of the ermine’s desire was a woodrat clinging to a small ledge near the top of the cliff. Time and time again, the ermine climbed toward the rat, leaping once it could climb no closer. A dozen times the ermine did this, every time falling 20 feet to the snowy ground below. And a dozen times the ermine sprang back up to climb again.

I left the encounter knowing I had something special. Later that year, I submitted the photo to the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. From a pool of 60,000 applicants, the top 100 photos are displayed in the London-based museum, and then they travel the world for a year. Even though I felt like my photo of the ermine had a chance, I was still shocked when, months after my application, I was notified that I had indeed made the list of 100. To say that it is the honor of my photographic career is an understatement.