The new Minnesota state park sticker celebrating Big Stone Lake State Park will be available at the start of the new year. The image was captured by John White. (Contributed)

It’s one of western Minnesota’s most popular destinations for anglers, the birthplace of the Minnesota River, and it is appreciated by many for the beauty of its prairie and woodlands nestled along the waters of Big Stone Lake.

Big Stone Lake State Park will be known by many more this coming year, as it is the park chosen to be featured on the annual state park permit sticker available at the start of 2024.

Fittingly, the image that will celebrate the park was captured by a passionate nature photographer who knows this park intimately. Since moving to a home in rural Big Stone County just a few miles from the park in 2013, photographer John White has been visiting the park two and three times a week, camera in hand.

He had only an instant to capture the image of a variegated meadowhawk dragonfly atop the seeded head of bluestem prairie grass that is now the featured image for the new sticker.

Photographer John White submitted this image of a variegated meadowhawk dragonfly on the head of a prairie bluestem. It has been chosen as the image for the upcoming year’s Minnesota state park permit sticker celebrating Big Stone Lake State Park. (Contributed / John White)

It was taken at day’s end, and White said he was taking advantage of the ambient light found at sunset. “I was ambling through and taking pictures of other stuff when I happened to see right in front of me on a piece of big bluestem where a dragonfly had landed,” said White.

Retired from a 55-year career as a photojournalist, White said he was still “trained” as one.

“When you see something happen in front of you, you automatically react. That’s what I did for that,” he explained.

The image spoke to the very essence of the prairie, according to White. The bluestem grass and the ambient mix of purple and red coloring in the sky all said “prairie.” So did the chosen dragonfly. Variegated meadowhawks favor prairie areas and rely on clean water for their early life development.

This is among the photos John White submitted for consideration for the Big Stone Lake State Park permit image. This view of Big Stone Lake from the state park features the ambient colors found over the western Minnesota landscape at sunset. (Contributed / John White)

It was one of several images he submitted to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in St. Paul for consideration as the image for this year’s sticker. Terri Dinesen, manager for the Big Stone Lake and Lac qui Parle state parks, said she had been asked by staff in the department’s St. Paul office if she knew of anyone with photographs that could speak to the beauty of the Big Stone park.

“Who better to have photos than John,” she said was her immediate thought.

Photos he has: He has been a featured artist in the Upper Minnesota River Valley Arts Crawl, or Meander, since 2014 and known for his nature photographs, which he also features in his online blog, Listening Stones Farm.

When he doesn’t have a camera in his hands, John White has a fly rod, or as in this case, a stringer of fish. (West Central Tribune file photo)

White, who recently turned 80, has enjoyed nature photography throughout his life. His journalism career included stints at major daily newspapers in Colorado, Wisconsin and Iowa, which allowed him to explore the beauty of wild lands from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River blufflands.

Capturing images of the western Minnesota prairie — or what remains of it — has been his passion ever since 1997. Before retiring in 2012, White served for 20 years as the editor of the Clara City Herald in Chippewa County. As the 1997 flood raged along the Minnesota River, John Donner, a pilot and fire chief in Clara City at the time, invited White to join him for a flight over the flooded landscape.

White said he looked down from the plane and saw what looked like lakes all over the place. Asked what he was looking at, his host told him the flood had temporarily brought back all of the wetlands that once covered the landscape, but have been drained for agriculture.

He realized that with something like 99 percent of our wetlands drained and a like percentage of the prairie plowed, the prairie pothole landscape has become “an extinct environment.”

Now that he is retired, he has focused his attention on capturing photographs of the prairie and wetlands that remain.

It takes him to many locations, but the Big Stone Lake State Park is among his favorites. It reminds him of his other favorite state park, the Upper Sioux Agency State Park. He appreciates the beauty found in the joining of river woodlands, and river bluff and prairie lands.

He said he is honored to provide a photograph that helps make others aware of the beauty found at the Big Stone Lake State Park. “(I’m) so happy that it’s getting this recognition because it’s a neat state park,” he said.