Washington (CNN) -- Joel Sartore's photograph of gentle Bryn is a permanent record, but she has been lost forever.

The Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit died in 2008 shortly after the picture was taken. She was the last of her kind.

Sartore, who has worked for the National Geographic Society for two decades, called the brief shooting session with the doomed rabbit a "solemn occasion," knowing she would not be around much longer.