Vics Blog

The San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado are a photographer’s dream. Starting in mid July, you’ll find remote mountain valleys filled with the music of splashing, pristine creeks and waterfalls. Hillsides and meadows are sprinkled in all directions with a bounty of beautiful wildflowers including columbine and Indian paintbrush. Ghost towns like Animas Forks can be found on the numerous four wheel drive roads that crisscross the area and take you to lofty places with names like Yankee Boy Basin, Poughkeepsie Gulch and Corkscrew Pass. The high peaks always surround you and you’ll understand why they’ve been called the American Alps.
Around the first week of October, the purple mountain slopes are dusted in hues of green, copper and gold as the aspen and scrub oak blanket themselves in their fall colors. The highest peaks glow orange in the evening air as the sun sets and reflects on newly fallen snow. In the distance, you can usually hear a bull elk bugle or coyotes howl at the moon as it rises and casts its ghostly light. I’ve been able to get some great images on the Dallas Divide road between Telluride and Ouray in the final half hour of the day.
Last summer, my friends, Mark and Terry Weishaup, Wayne Morine, and I decided to take a quick trip over to Ouray and spend three days four wheeling and taking pictures. We spent nights in a campground at the edge of town and each morning got up two hours before sunup and rode four wheelers into the high basins. The first morning we traveled up to Yankee Boy Basin which is best known for its’ incredible carpets of flowers. The lighting was tough at best as early morning in the high country can present numerous difficulties for a photographer. You can really burn out the color of the sky when focusing on the foreground or get great skies and leave all the flowers in colorless dark shadows when focusing on the mountains and clouds. I tried various techniques and filters but in four hours of shooting came up with only a couple of decent shots.
We jumped back on the four wheelers and decided to trek up to some old abandoned mines that we’d seen on the top of a steep, very narrow road that took off at the bottom of the valley and rose some one thousand feet above Yankee Boy. About half way up, our vehicles were rocking on three wheels instead of four and being less than a foot from the edge of a precarious two hundred foot drop, Mark and Terry decided to back up and turn around. We motored on up for another hour, keeping gut checks to ourselves and getting some awe-inspiring pictures at the top. We knew we had to go back down, but I was comforted by the important fact that Wayne was driving and I got the safe seat on the inside of the road and away from the cliffs. Two more days of the same, sunup to sundown, and taking a thousand pictures or more, we had a great adventure and got the pictures to prove it.

As a wildlife and nature photographer, I’m always amazed at what people are overlooking when they zone out while driving down the road. Maybe there’s too much going on in our hectic lives as we clinch the steering wheel and talk on the cell phone. There’s the kids to think about,  work, money and many of the other pressures we feel in today’s fast paced world. Of course, there’s always talk radio with those political pundits telling us what’s wrong with everything and why we can’t do anything about it and that adds frustration to the mix. Whatever the case, if we could just slow down a bit, get our minds  in the present tense and shake off the mind clutter,  we might see a lot of the beauty passing us by. Now I’m not suggesting that you rubber neck from side to side in the driver’s seat, but using a  little peripheral vision can do the trick.  If you have passengers they can look for animals and scenery as you scoot down the fast lane and you’ll be amazed how helpful they can be. My father, Win Schendel, always reminds me of how beautiful the mountains look while driving on I25 and how lucky we are in Fort Collins to have such an incredible view.

     Last August , driving the road from Fort Collins to Masonville, I was amazed at the people passing me while I was driving the speed limit. Everyone it seemed was in a hurry to get someplace other than where they were. Looking for a great view of Horsetooth rock,  I spotted a red tail hawk in an old snag about twenty feet from the pavement.  I slowed down, turned around and pulled off on the curb to see if I could get a couple of good pictures. As I’ve said before, when photographing raptors, they’ll fly in a hurry if they spot  you, so it’s best to stay in the car, roll your window down, and take your pictures from there.  

     The feathered creature acted as if I wasn’t there at all. He was bobbing his head back and forth and up and down as though he were a boxer trying to avoid a left hook. Clicking pictures through the telephoto lens made for some interesting stuff, but I couldn’t figure out why he was acting so weird.  Then, as I took a minute to review images on the back screen of the camera to make sure everything was sharp, I saw exactly what was going on. Zooming in, I could see that hummingbirds were buzzing and dive bombing the hawk at lightning speed.  I hadn’t seen them with my eyes, but the camera, being set at a high shutter speed was capturing the action. Of more than a hundred pictures I took before he flew, I got four pretty awesome shots. During that fifteen minutes not a single speeding driver had stopped or slowed down to see what was going on and I was reminded of how much we all miss of this wonderful world.

One of the things I love about being a landscape and animal photographer is giving advice to would-be nature photographers.

Talking about composing shots while you’re literally in the trenches… and about being prepared for every outdoors image, all of that ‘shop talk’ is hugely rewarding. That’s why I hold regular nature photographic workshops and try to make myself available to up and coming shooters who have questions.

And do they ever! Many photographers contact me and ask if I’d  review their portfolios and give them some honest feedback.  I’m happy to do this and I encourage people to give me a call.

Be forewarned, though!  

I only like looking at the portfolios of those who take their nature photography to heart. I will give feedback as one serious photographer speaking candidly to another. Your results don’t have to be perfect yet – otherwise why would you be asking me for input – but your seriousness needs to show!

This is a wonderful community of nature photographers, those who take capturing life outdoors — in all its complexity and unrehearsed charm and grandeur – seriously.

If you’re a serious nature photographer and you’d like to send me your portfolio for a critique, expect to get real criticism, not just some watered-down words of encouragement.  My teachers were great because they were honest and sometimes ruthless with me.  That‘s how I progressed—by having someone point out what was lacking in my work.

And this is how I think it’s best to help other photographers.  I won’t be mean, but I will be honest, as I would hope that you would be if you were in my shoes.

Hey, and if you’re having trouble getting your portfolio together, or if you want some pointers when you’re starting out, be sure to check out my nature photographic workshops.   Click here for more info.

I was taking pictures of Common Mergansers today when it was 9 degrees out.

Then in the Big Thompson Canyon it was a touch warmer, twelve degrees, when I shot a stand of Ponderosa Pines in the snow.