By Anna Pier
Leo Dale’s stunning image of a coyote at sunset won first place in the Young Nature Photographers (under 18) of the National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) annual photo competition. Dale, who turned 18 in September 2025, took the photo at Point Reyes National Seashore in November 2024. He submitted it to the NWF in the early summer and was notified in October that his photo had won. The prominent nonprofit, dedicated to the preservation of wildlife, asked him for some words to accompany the photo, which will be published in the Winter issue of the NWF Magazine.
“I feel like coyotes enjoy trotting across ridges, so I am always on the lookout for them around dusk. As a magnificent and clouded sunset was materializing, I spotted this coyote on a distant ridge. I hurried to position myself and was able to catch the canine as it was crossing a ranch road with lower grasses.” The shot was from about 500 feet away.
Dale explains that he chose this particular photo to submit because it is a “dramatic, fairly unique image, and I really like the feel of the shot.”
The son of Sonoma Ecology Center’s Caitlin Cornwall and Richard Dale, Leo says he was inspired to get into photography by the photos of family trips taken by his father, “who is a bit of a photographer too.” He admits it was originally something to do when, on walks with his parents, they stopped to look up plants. A graduate of Sonoma Charter School, Leo’s 8th grade Exiting Project was on landscape photography.
A visit to the old elk preserve at Tomales Point was pivotal in his wildlife photography story. “It was an amazing experience to see those animals so close to home.” Then in the summer of 2023 the incredible opportunity to go on a safari in Tanzania with his parents and a family friend continued his passion for photographing animals. About shooting at the National Seashore, Dale elaborates, “In Point Reyes there is so much unexpectedness, you can never know what you’ll see. It’s a little game of chance and of being prepared for those moments.”
In Sonoma Valley, he likes to take pictures at the Montini Open Space Preserve, right above his home. There is a Great Horned Owl family there that he has really enjoyed photographing. Leo is a freshman at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
This is the second competition for wildlife photography that the Sonoma local has won. The other was the 2025 competition of Nature Talks, in which his black-and-white panning image of a bobcat with prey, also shot at Point Reyes, won the Youth Nature Photographer of the Year (10-17) offered by the international nature photography organization. (See Sonoma Valley Sun, December 4)
Dale commented that there are two more competitions open to 18-and-under which he can enter, and then he will be in the big competitive world of adult photography. The young photographer received a $500 prize for this photo. NWF is the largest private, nonprofit conservation education and advocacy organization in the United States, with over six million members and supporters. See more of Leo’s photos on Instagram, @leodale_wildlife.
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