Before photographer Ami Vitale ventured up to the Wolong Nature Reserve in China, local panda caretakers warned her not to get her hopes up.

"People are like, 'Well how hard can it be to shoot a panda?' You can't believe how hard it was," she told Tech Insider.

But Vitale persevered with a lot of patience — and by wearing a crude panda costume soaked in panda urine. She went home that day with a shot that ended up as a full page spread published in the August issue of National Geographic magazine.

"I was like 'Oh my God. The panda gods are on my side," she said.

Pandas are shy bear that hide deep in the woods. Up until the 20th century, people spotted them so infrequently that Chinese artists almost never incorporated them into their artwork. Even in the fenced-in Wolong Nature Reserve the bears rarely showed themselves to human beings.

Here's how Vitale, working for five years on the project, captured some of the wildest panda photos we've ever seen.