• LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) -- If photographer and University of Wyoming graduate Joe Riis spends a month working on a photo assignment and walks away with one good picture, he'll call it a success.
• Considering that one recent assignment was a feature for National Geographic magazine on the Gobi bear -- there are only about 30 left in the wild -- getting any good pictures might be considered a success.
• To snag pictures of the elusive mammal, Riis traveled to Mongolia and set up camera traps, which he left for up to six months at a time. An infrared beam triggers the camera when it's disturbed, allowing the South Dakota native to get up-close images of wildlife in their natural habitat.
• Riis perfected the technique while photographing the pronghorn migration in Wyoming, and now the photographer has traveled the world capturing images of some of the rarest animals on earth.
• "I'm fine with spending a month or two and ending up with one or two really nice pictures rather than a whole bunch of stuff that's not printable," he said.
• Riis, 28, was studying wildlife management at UW when he picked up a camera and started taking photographs. He took one introductory photography class, spent two summers taking pictures, and then jumped into photography full-time when he graduated in 2008.
• "It's what I wanted to do. I didn't want to get a regular job. I just decided to see what I could do, see if I could try to make it work," he tells the Laramie Boomerang (http://bit.ly/TuHRHM).
• He spent two years living in his truck and driving around Wyoming documenting the pronghorn migration from Grand Teton National Park to the Red Desert. The twice-yearly journey is the second-longest overland mammal migration in North

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