Wildlife Photographer of the Year

José Luis Rodríguez (Spain)

The storybook wolf

José Luis visualized this image many years ago, when Iberian wolves first returned to Ávila in the Castilla y León region of northern Spain, and cattle ranchers declared war on them. His idea was a picture that would symbolize the ancient conflict between humans and wolves, while showing the beauty and strength of this fabled animal. But it took a long time to find the ideal location, let alone a wolf that would jump a gate. His chance came when he found a landowner who was happy to have both the wolves and José Luis on his property, and also had the ideal setting: a copse and an ancient, disused cattle corral.

José Luis started by placing meat in the corral. Once he knew a male wolf was visiting regularly, jumping the gate, he began to introduce the bits of equipment needed to set up a camera trap. At first, the wolf didn’t like the flash triggered by the trip beam, but after a few weeks he took no notice of the light or the clicks of the hidden digital camera. Now that the wolf was happy and the camera positioning was right, it was time to take the final picture with a medium-format camera. When the first transparencies arrived back from the lab, José Luis was overjoyed to find he finally had the picture he had dreamt of.

Hasselblad 503CW with a 6x6 Fujichrome backing + Planar 80mm lens; 1/30 sec at f11; ISO 50; purpose-made Ficap infrared camera trap.

This photograph is available to buy as a print.