Acclaimed Big Cat Photographer Captures Putting Photos of Elusive Bobcats

If you’re on the lookout for adjectives for bobcats, there’s stealthy or very stealthy. However, that doesn’t cease award-winning wildlife photographer Steve Winter from capturing unimaginable pictures of the elusive wildcats.

Capturing sharp, high-resolution pictures of bobcats within the wild is each tough and tantalizing as a result of these animals are elusive, sometimes keep away from people, mix into their environment, and so they’re quick and agile.

Award-winning nature photographer Steve Winter used wi-fi photograph traps to doc bobcats in New Jersey, together with at nighttime and in snowy circumstances. His well-lit photograph of a bobcat kitten is on the quilt of Nature Conservancy Magazine (2025 / Issue 3).

Bobcats within the Wild

“50 years ago,” said Nature Conservancy magazine, “bobcats vanished from the State of New Jersey. Wildlife scientists reintroduced them, but to survive a changing climate and increasing urbanization, these felines will need more room to roam.”

The cowl story was written by environmental journalist Sharon Guynup, partner of photographer Winter.

Credentials

Born in Indiana, photojournalist Winter began on the Black Star company and migrated to nature images.

For greater than three a long time, Winter has been a contributing photographer for National Geographic Magazine. Specializing in images of huge cats, Winter is broadly quoted and honored for his nature work. He was named BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year and BBC Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year and obtained high nature story honors from World Press Photo. Winter is two-time winner of Picture of the Year International’s Global Vision Award.

In 2022, he based Big Cat Voices to advocate for giant felines.

“My contribution,” Winter says, “is through storytelling: photos, magazine articles, and documentary films.”
He hopes his work evokes his viewers to assist defend massive cats.

Photographing Bobcats in New Jersey

Winter photographed bobcats within the wild at The Nature Conservancy’s Johnsonburg Swamp Preserve in New Jersey, some 60 miles northwest of New York City.

“The preserve (700+ acres) is a habitat stronghold within Bobcat Alley, a vital corridor of protected land that The Nature Conservancy and partners are working to create in northwestern New Jersey,” says the conservation group. “Iconic mammals like black bears, red foxes, and state-endangered bobcats can thrive in this greenway, which connects critical migratory habitat between and along ridges of the Kittatinny and Highlands mountains, subranges of North America’s Appalachian Mountains.”

In slender pathways, Winter arrange digicam traps, utilizing an ultra-wide 10-24mm lens and weatherproof housings for the cameras and flash models. Five-frame photographs had been triggered when bobcats crossed a beam; aperture was keyed by the flash.

How lengthy did the challenge take? “Longer than I thought,” stated Winter, describing bobcats as “a bit skittish.”

Weather was not an element aside from rain which curtails bobcats’ actions. The digicam flash would trigger some bobcats to cease for a flash or two, after which the cats saved transferring, Winter stated. Curious sub-adult bobcats may cease and take a look at the digicam field by smelling it.

With a long time of expertise and world awards, Winter remains to be confounded when his wi-fi gear doesn’t work.

“Voodoo, I call it voodoo,” he says.

Conservationists and New Jersey wildlife officers applaud Winter’s bobcat pictures, documenting the species’ restoration and its magnificence within the wild.

Bobcats As a Cultural Symbol

The bobcat is a Native American cultural image for persistence, independence, and clear imaginative and prescient. Bobcats can also signify greed and selfishness.

In sports activities, the bobcat is a mascot at Texas State University and Ohio University. At The Nature Conservancy, the senior photograph editor (Alex Snyder) is a double-degree graduate of Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication.

“I jumped at the chance to work on a story about bobcats,” says Snyder.

The Allure of Bobcats for Photographers

At occasions, the elusive bobcat seems in trail-cam photographs. On August 15, Field & Stream published a listing of “60 Craziest Trail Camera Photos We’ve Ever Seen,” which included a few photographs of bobcats and deer.

But in-focus digicam photographs are rarer. Wildlife photographer Randy Robbins wrote on PetaPixel in 2021 that “it’s usually a fleeting glimpse, as they see you about the same time you see them and then they disappear into the woods.”

Robbins, based mostly in California, shared the story of his three-year quest to {photograph} a bobcat, lastly capturing this picture with an infrared-triggered digicam lure.

Wildlife conservation photographer and filmmaker Sarah Killingsworth, based mostly in Marin County, California, is impressed by the adaptability of bobcats.

“Bobcats live throughout the Bay Area,” she told Bay Nature in 2021, “and the march of development into their habitat has forced them to adapt to an increasingly urban life. Bobcats are without question my favorite species to watch and photograph. That passion has led me to observe the same bobcats over years, including a truly special mother who has raised multiple litters of kittens in a suburban environment.”

How did Killingsworth take this suburban photograph?

“With a long lens from across the street,” she says. These kittens had been born in a yard close by.

Perhaps one other adjective — along with stealthy — additionally applies to bobcats: affected person.

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About the writer: Ken Klein lives in Silver Spring, Maryland; he’s retired after a profession in politics, lobbying, and media together with The Associated Press and Gannett in Florida. Klein is an alumnus of Ohio University and a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Scripps College of Communication. Professionally, he has labored for Fort Myers News-Press (Gannett), The Associated Press (Tallahassee), Senator Bob Graham, and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA).