Behind the lens: How I got the photo — North Bank Mink

Published 12:15 pm Friday, January 24, 2020

PENDLETON — At our Thursday morning budget meeting, the newsroom was discussing the order of stories for Friday’s East Oregonian and working to nail down which story would run as the centerpiece, the main story on A1.

After discussion we decided that the most appropriate story would be on the inaugural meeting of the North Bank of the Umatilla River Advisory Committee.

The next step was to find art for the story. While we will often run landscape photos with stories, when it comes to the centerpiece we like to incorporate people or animals to help bring life to the images.

As any wildlife lover knows, the best time to view wildlife is typically in the early hours of the morning or the early evening, the times offer the most wildlife activity and most variety of species. Unfortunately, I had assignments in both the morning and the evening, so there I was, early afternoon, traipsing the north bank of the Umatilla River in search of some form of wildlife.

When I set out on the assignment, I was searching for a nice picture of a bird in flight. Unfortunately, after an hour of wandering the bank, the only animals I had been able to find were a very inquisitive squirrel and a barking dog in a neighboring yard.

After feeling a bit hopeless at the chances of finding any additional wildlife, I wandered down to the bank of the river to stand and wait for a bird to fly past.

Ten minutes or so passed and I was still standing watching the water and sky for animals when I caught a creature darting through the sticks out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head to see a mink staring back at me. I slowly raised my 300mm lens, the mink poised just beyond the lens’ 2.5 meter minimum focusing distance, the closest distance that I can be to an object and have the lens focus, and took a shot.

I was able to capture nine frames of the mink with its head in varying stages of disguise among the twigs and sticks before it scurried away. The photo above is the seventh of these nine frames. I followed the mink west along the river bank before it escaped into a dense patch of foliage along the water’s edge.

Upon returning to the office I opened up the photos on the computer to browse through them, and while I suspected the creature may have been a mink, my suspicions were confirmed by a retired wildlife biologist, Bill Aney, who happened to be in the office that afternoon having his picture taken for an upcoming column in the newspaper.