Vics Blog

     One of the great places to improve your wildlife and landscape photography is Snowy Range, Wyoming.  Just a short distance from Fort Collins, Colorado or Cheyenne, Wyoming, the high peaks of the Medicine Bow Range are reflected in many of the small alpine lakes that dot the region. The best time to photograph is early morning when the sun highlights the peaks and reflects on still water.  July through September are spectacular and are great times to take pictures, although alpine wildflowers abound in the middle of summer and learning to take images of them is a workshop I teach.  After a few hours of instruction, my students learn to capture pictures like the pros. Students need to layer their clothing as mornings and evening can be very cool and midday’s can be hot. Because of the high altitude it’s also advisable to wear sunscreen to keep from burning. Colorado and the West offer some of the greatest wildlife and scenery opportunities for photography in the world. Snowy Range is right at the top of the list and is virtually missed by most.

     Last week I conducted one of my one on one digital photography workshops in Fort Collins, Colorado.  My student and I spent ten hours shooting images of Osprey, Great Horned Owls and Red Fox. One of the things that I have found I can really help photographers with is learning the specifics of their cameras. How to focus properly, how to set up quickly for great wildlife shots and how to capture great detail.  I also help with Adobe Photoshop ideas and field photo instruction detailing balance, color and composition.  I feel that workshops with more than three or four students lose some of the quality time I can spend helping them individually so I prefer to keep sessions small. We had a very successful day and I know my student learned a lot. His comment was it was like “Trying to take a drink through a firehose”.

A few weeks ago I was photographing my good friend Andy Leslie fly fishing on the Laramie River north of Chambers Lake which in up near the top of Cameron Pass. For those who haven’t been there, it’s a beautiful little stream that quietly flows through hay and cattle country and eventually meanders into Wyoming at the eastern edge of the Snowy Range and through the city of Laramie.  I love to take pictures of sportsmen including hunters, kayakers and fisherman and in doing so it keeps my skills sharp for those days when a big moose or elk comes around and I have to work fast.  Trying to capture a fly line as it whips back and forth through the air or shooting images of hunting buddies as they sit around an evening campfire can be just as enjoyable as any hike  through the woods looking for wildlife.

     Andy had called me about a week before and asked if I’d like to tag along with him and a couple of buddies as they snow shooed along the river trying to bag some big rainbow and brown trout.  Now I’ve heard a lot of fish stories in my day, but when he talked about twenty three inch monsters that weighed upwards of seven pounds on that river I had to say I was a bit sceptical. The real draw though, was being able to capture fishermen on snowshoes  and so it didn’t take me more than a couple of seconds to say “yes”.

     After driving a couple of hours into weather that got worse by the mile, we arrived at the Rawah ranch and strapped on our all weather , all terrain, four wheel drive snow shoes and began the short trek to the river.  I hadn’t done such a thing in forty years and being just a tad on the out of shape side, I could tell this was going to be an undertaking. It was drizzling sleet and rain which causes snow to become rotten. Rotten snow doesn’t support people on snowshoes very well and needless to say that about every twenty steps or so I managed to sink down about eighteen inches and fall over.  Now that’s not so bad, but trying to get up is worse because when you put your hands down and try and push yourself up, they sink too.  Luckily, everyone took pity on me and every so often they’d come by and lend a helping hand. It wasn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be and ended up being a great adventure.

I did manage to take a lot of pictures during the five hours of wallowing in quick sand snow and the fishing was more spectacular than Andy  said it would be.  Every few minutes, as they drifted nymphs through deep, dark pools of ice cold water, they would hook one of those whopping brutes and after a great fight land him in the net.  The action was fast and furious and the breathtaking scenery only added to the images we got.  Thank you Andy.

About the second week of April, as the sun creeps higher in the spring sky and days get a little warmer, one of my favorite times of the year arrives.  From now until early July, the season of baby animals and their mothers is upon us. All around Fort Collins, if you know where to look, you’ll find moms raising their new families.  In a quiet, secluded spot, mother fox brings her five babies out from the den for the first time. I  can’t begin to tell you how rewarding and fun it is to watch those little fuzz balls as they play romper room with each other and then snuggle close to mom while they nurse.  She continually watches over them, providing protection, food, lessons and companionship.  As the kits grow, their appetite does as well and she has to hunt most of the night trying to find enough food to feed them.  I’ve watched and photographed as she lays in total exhaustion trying to catch a few winks every couple of hours and I find myself wishing I could help her as the workload increases every day.

     Across town, mother goose has been sitting on her nest for days in the  wind, snow, rain, cold and blazing sun and I’m amazed at her patience and fortitude. When they hatch, the goslings are incredibly cute and I love to take pictures as they snuggle under her downy feathers for warmth and protection. I can tell you from experience though, don’t get to close when mom’s have youngsters about.  Geese are known to hiss as a warning and bite like heck when they get mad.

     About the end of June, the antelope, deer and elk will start having their little ones.  Early last July, I was fortunate enough to find a baby antelope that had been born within the last few minutes.  Mom was just a short distance away and although she had just given birth, was already having to fight a badger who had honed in on the fawn. They went round and round for about thirty minutes, but the doe persevered and won the day. She was back in a flash, licking that little one and helping it stand for the first time on wobbly legs.

     I don’t know if animals are capable of love, but in all the years I’ve photographed them, I feel that they must be.  I marvel at the way mothers go to such incredible lengths to raise their young and the tenderness they give in doing so.  They give all of themselves, including their own lives if necessary, to make sure that a new generation survives.

     Every day that I watch moms and babies, I’m reminded of how much love and tenderness  my mother has given to our family. Like the fox, we exhausted her and she never complained. Like the goose, we snuggled around her for warmth and protection. Like the antelope, she protected us and helped us walk on wobbly legs. On this Mother’s Day, I want my mother, Joanne Schendel,  to know how very special she is, how often I think of her, and how much she is loved.

One of the fun places to practice wildlife photography skills is at the Denver Zoo.  About once a year I make the trip and spend four or five hours honing techniques, learning the intricacies of my camera and lenses, and having a lot of fun just watching the people and animals. I’ve traveled  to South Africa and Namibia, but the thirty hour flight to get there is something you just can’t do every day. Of course once you’re there you have to spend a couple of weeks in order to make it worth your while and it’s expensive. On the other hand, you can find many of the same creatures an hour’s drive from Fort Collins and they don’t run away or charge you when you take their pictures.

     There are some technical difficulties you have to surmount when taking images in zoos that you don’t have in the wild.  They include fences and cages and as you get a bit older, screaming babies. Those aside, use a good zoom lens and low apertures when taking your shots. Try to remember that the  main function of a camera is to collect light. The aperture of a lens ( getting a little technical here)  is the diameter of the lens opening and is most often controlled by an iris. The larger the diameter of the aperture which is expressed as a numeric value (F2.8 for instance), the more light reaches your image sensor , keeping the subject  in focus and softening backgrounds. If you get it right, your pictures might look as though they were actually taken in some exotic location.

     Two weeks ago, during my annual pilgrimage, I was able to get some great shots of lions, zebras, baby tigers, giraffes and trumpeter swans. After a couple of hours of shooting, and needing a break, I grabbed a piece of pizza for lunch and headed over to a pond where I’d seen two swans a bit earlier. I was sitting on a bench when I noticed a family having snacks a few feet away. Now remember , people watching can be fun, and as luck would have it, I was in for a real belly buster.  Swans can get a bit tenacious when food is involved and especially when they’re use to getting handouts.  The mom and dad were talking and paying no attention to their daughter who was sitting on top of the picnic table teasing the big white birds by waving chips  in front of their faces.  They swung their long black necks back and forth, over and over, following the motion of her hand, inching ever closer.  This went on for a couple of minutes and then in blink of an eye  they lurched into the air, jumping right between the parents and thumping them on their  heads with seven foot wings. Hands, feet and sandwich parts went flying everywhere and a millisecond later they grabbed a chip right out of the girls fingers and made off like two masked bandits. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t even take a picture.

Late winter and early spring  are the toughest times to shoot good wildlife pictures. The elk and mule deer are easy to find because the deep snows in the high mountains have driven them into the lower valleys in search of food. The difficulty is that the males have shed their antlers and both sexes have winter coats that look like they’ve been run through the ringer.  They don’t  move much because the grass and bushes they feed on have the calorie count of paper and they need to conserve what little energy they have just to survive.  You might find some bighorn sheep in the Big Thompson and Poudre canyons and big rams can be easier to spot just because the snows drive them to lower elevations as well. Look for them on southern exposures on the north side of the road but be prepared for biting cold and howling winds.

    On a interesting note, this is a great time to photograph coyote and fox feeding on the carcasses of animals that just couldn’t make it to spring.  Look for a bunch of magpies and crows huddled together in the sage and chances are good they might be sharing lunch with a predator. I don’t like pictures of blood, but concentrating on the interaction of birds and coyotes fighting for scraps can be fascinating. Eagles are tough to find as they are heading north once again, but hawks are plentiful and you can find them on the tops of telephone poles looking for road kill. Action shots are awesome so be patient and wait for them to fly. It’s a lucky day for you and the hawk, but a bad day for the mouse when you see a raptor flying with one it its talons. There’s lots of geese roaming around the city and you can get really close for pictures. Be careful though, because they need their space and if you crowd them,  well, take my word for it,  there’s nothing quite like a mad goose on the loose hissing and chasing after you.

     My favorite animals to find this time of year are ducks because they always give me a good laugh. Look for them around ponds and ditches and take some time to really watch their behaviors.  Make sure you have a good telephoto lens and try to stay in your car or a blind if possible. They get nervous easily and will fly in a blink. Drakes push each other around vying for dominance and both sexes like to splash and dip in and out of the water. You’ll find a lot of mallards, but my preferences are wigeons, mergansers, pintails and wood ducks. Wood ducks are the most colorful and while hard to find, make incredible photographs. It can take a lot of patience to get a good picture,  but  after six hours of sitting in the cold last weekend,  a mallard swam right next to a pair of courting wood ducks who snapped at him as he approached to close for comfort.  Tough time of the year, but sometimes you can still get a great shot.