Vics Blog

Utah offers some of the most beautiful landscapes to photograph in the United States. The wildness of the place is almost unimaginable and it is peppered with national parks and monuments including Arches, Canyon lands, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Glen Canyon, Grand Staircase Escalante and Zion. Tucked between these awesome places are numerous state parks and Indian reservations which possess fascinating treasures for the eyes to behold at every turn.
A few years back I’d seen an inspiring photograph of a old Anasazi ruin that really captured my interest. It was of an ancient rock house tucked underneath a stone cliff that literally looked like it was erupting into flames of fire. I knew it had to be located somewhere in the southwestern part of the country but couldn’t remember its name or a place to start looking. After several hours of researching cliff dwellings and their locations on the internet, I happened upon the same picture I’d seen before. The ruin was called “Firehouse” and after some more digging, it was indeed located several miles west of Blanding, Utah.
One of the magazines I shoot for needed some pictures of desert big horn sheep so Wayne Morine and I hired a guide and planned a trip to the Superstition Mountains just east of Phoenix in late April. We thought we’d take an extra day along the way and find the Firehouse. All the research said that if you wanted to get the best shots they had to be taken between late October and February so that reflections from below the ruin would light up the flames of sandstone in the overhanging cliff. It was also very specific that early morning or late afternoon gave the best chance of capturing the fiery display.
We got away from Ft. Collins very early, but after seven hours of driving we were running late. It took additional time to find the hidden turn off of Utah highway 95 on to a rutty, dirt road that led to the trailhead. After another mile of hiking through a canyon of dust and sink holes we found the ruin at around one p.m. but the afternoon had turned overcast. There was a couple sitting near the base of the dwelling and they informed us that they hadn’t taken a shot because the light had been flat all day long. The little stone house wasn’t much higher than four or five feet and we wondered how short the natives must have been who lived there.
We shuffled around the area for a few disappointing minutes and found some ancient pictographs on some of the surrounding rocks but the light was terrible. All the luck was against us. Wrong time of the year, wrong time of the day and clouds. We were just about to hike back out when our fortunes completely changed in about two seconds. The sky cleared and for some unknown reason the light turned fabulous. We swore we could hear native Indian chanting in the wind as the ancient resident ghosts taking pity on us. The stone cliff seemed to change into flame and we took several hundred pictures in the next two hours. Sometimes you just get the good breaks. Click

Photographing wildlife is incredibly exciting and spending time in the wilderness with all that’s wild is almost as good as it gets. The key word is “almost” because spending time with my lady is always better. Candi is wonderful to travel with and one of our favorite destinations is Santa Fe , New Mexico between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s an incredibly romantic city with lots of fine dining, art galleries, shopping and beautiful scenery. The scent of burning pinon pine and the spice of Northern New Mexican cuisine wafts through the cool air and adds to the southwestern ambiance. Most nights we walk the streets, stepping into the local cantinas for a margarita or two and listening to the sounds of Spanish guitars as they serenade the evening away.
Now you might be wondering what all this has to do with photography? Santa Fe offers a great deal of subject matter and gives me a needed break from elk, deer and climbing up and down the mountains in snow storms. I also haven’t found any ill tempered moose in its streets ready to charge. Light in that part of the country is surreal and draws painters and photographers from all over the world trying to capture its magic. The sky is an azure blue and takes your breath away. Sunsets can be magnificent and they paint the adobe walls of the city in hues of coral and gold. We always spend several hours walking through the old neighborhoods looking for alleyways that hide hand hewn doors , gates and windows painted in turquoise and pink. The city celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2011 and all those years reflect in its hidden corners. On one side street we found a bright pink gateway adorned with all kinds of religious artifacts. On another, an aged door with chipped, faded blue paint and a large pumpkin at the side which made for wonderful contrasts in color. Take your time, be patient and look for everything unique. I try to use a short zoom lens which allows me to frame subjects easily.
We’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a dusting of snow on a couple of occasions. Canyon road hosts tons of galleries and during the holiday season its doors and windows are decorated with chili wreaths and ristras. As the gentle snowflakes fall, they make for perfect postcard pictures.
In the late evening look for luminarias along coble stone walkways which adorn the city for the holiday season. The shadows of flickering candle light in the brown paper bags can make for fascinating images. I like to take pictures of sculptures covered in snow which adorn the courtyard of Saint Francis Cathedral on the east side of the plaza. Take your tripod and use long time exposures to capture them against the stone walls of the church. Oh, and one last thing…..Make sure to relax and breath in the enchantment of this place with the one you love.

Last week I was conducting a photography workshop in the mountains up around Estes Park. We had scheduled the time a couple of weeks in advance hoping that the elk rut would have started and we’d get great shots of big bulls. Scouting the day before, I’d arrived at my favorite meadow at five in the morning hoping to hear bugling. Listening for over an hour in the darkness there was only silence and sun up produced nothing more. Needless to say, there was major apprehension on the part of this photographer as we started out the next morning. We arrived a little late, and there wasn’t an elk to be seen or heard. My workshops are all about learning to use the functions on your camera as well as working with the artsy side of taking good pictures but it’s really nice when the animals cooperate too.
We moved on and decided to start taking landscape pictures. Waterfalls make great subjects but the light was to bright and taking short time exposures burned out highlights on the water and made for lousy shots. Moving further upstream, we found some shaded pools and got some nice images working on the play of light and shadow but nothing great. As the day progressed we still couldn’t find any critters that wanted their portraits taken. Finally, after hours of searching we spotted a cow moose and her calf but they were so far away that pictures weren’t worth taking.
We continued looking for anything to photograph including chipmunks, ground squirrels and wildflowers. At six pm it started to rain. Now I’ve found over the years that if you stay patient (big hint) good things usually happen but I was beginning to have my doubts. We headed up the road, ascended past 10,000 feet, and the clouds started to break gingerly from the west.
Within half an hour things started looking up and we found several cow elk wanting to pose at timberline in the beautiful late afternoon light. We got some great pictures but the storm was moving quickly to the east and it looked like there might be a beautiful sunset so it was decided to head higher. At the top, and after searching all day, we finally found a huge bull elk and his harem but they were in the dark shadow of a hill which made for terrible images. They were however, moving up the slope toward the light at the top of the ridge. At the same time, two bright rainbows formed across the valley and the mountains lit up so we needed to make a quick decision, rainbows or elk? We went for the rainbows and jumped in the truck and headed back toward the west and in just five minutes were shooting awesome landscapes. Fortunately, the bands of color faded quickly, and we headed back down the road to see about the elk. Just as we arrived, the bull walked up to the summit and stood silhouetted against the fading five minutes of a splendiferous sunset. In the last twenty minutes of the day, staying patient to the end, we put several incredible images in the can.

Last week Wayne Morine and I traveled back to Yellowstone for a week of photography and the opportunity to show our photographs for two days at the invitation of the Old Faithful Inn. It was incredible to meet so many people from countries all over the world in the lobby and have them give us such positive feedback on the calendars and prints we had for sale. We marked the hours by watching the ebb and flow of tourists as they marched out of the hundred and seven year old hotel to see Old Faithful erupt and then rushed right back in again when it finished. It was an awesome experience but taking pictures in the park was better yet.
Our first evening, we camped at Colter Bay in the Grand Tetons. It had rained most of the afternoon but just a sunset the clouds parted and golden rays of sunshine lit the highest peaks and reflected in Oxbow Bend on the Snake River. A bit of a photo tip here; don’t give up on pictures until it’s just about dark. Early the next morning, we traveled to Madison Junction in Yellowstone to secure a campsite for the remainder of the week. On our arrival, we were informed that most of the campgrounds in the park are on a reservation system and that all sites were full for days to come. Luckily, we found a spot just a couple miles north of the town of West Yellowstone and set up shop.
Over the next two days, we found four black bears to photograph at close range. On one occasion, a rather half-baked tourist managed to get himself less than six feet from the jaws of a feeding bruin and snap a flash shot. I wish I’d been ready to shoot as that bear jumped right out of the bush and just missed landing an upper left paw on the dimwit. Here’s two other photo hints; get a good telephoto lens a respect an animal’s space. I think the bear realized the intelligence of the man and gave him a break and went back to dinner.
One evening, on Fire Hole Lake Drive, we were privileged to see another magnificent sunset. It had been raining for a couple of hours, but as the sun slipped low on the horizon, the sky exploded in colors of unbelievable beauty. It was all reflected in the terraces of a hot spring and made for great images.
The first days of August mark the beginning of the Bison rut, or mating season, and by the end of the week they were in full swing. Giant bulls were grumbling a low, guttural roar and in a one hour span I photographed two huge fights as the males crashed into each other to establish dominance for the right to breed. It was truly incredible, but sadly, it was the last afternoon in park. If you haven’t been there, it’s a magical paradise and I highly recommend it.

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.

Waves of Stone

The desert southwest of the United States is one of the most beautifully wild places on the planet to photograph. Utah’s Canyon Lands and Arches National Parks, with their imposing read sandstone cliffs, are fascinating  places to shoot incredible landscapes. Bryce and Zion National Parks are equally magnificent and offer grand vistas of unbelievably huge rock formations. Of course, there’s Arizona’s Grand Canyon, Canyon De Chelly, Saguaro National Park, Monument Valley and countless photo treasure sites everywhere you turn. Sunrises and sunsets, with their golden hues reflected on towering, rocky cathedrals are breath taking. It’s as if Mother Nature designed a place that was perfect for great experiences and taking pictures.

     I could go on and on about all of the places I’ve been privileged to see, but my favorites are the hidden slot canyons that abound in the canyon country of Arizona and Utah.  The Grand Canyon is a mile deep and over sixteen miles across in contrast to slot canyon walls that are only a few feet apart and are so enclosed that sunlight rarely reaches their depths.  They have names like Buckskin Gulch, Baptist Draw, Lick Wash, and Antelope Canyon. For me, they can give a very intimate experience, and are much different from the overwhelming feelings I get when I see boundless landscapes. They have been sculpted over millenia by roaring wind and flash floods and their walls look like gentle   waves engraved in stone.  Pastel colors of yellow, pink, mauve; red and crimson are sometimes illuminated by piercing shafts of light that penetrate the abyss from the desert above.  Take your tripod and shoot short time exposures.

     Last spring, while motoring down a remote road in southern Utah, I ran into some folks that told me of a beautiful little slot canyon at the end of a sandy wash fifteen miles ahead.  I followed their directions and after some wash board driving, parked the Xterra, grabbed my gear, and started hiking two miles through a narrowing ravine that stopped abruptly at the portal. With three hundred foot sandstone walls towering above me, I could see that countless floods had washed through the entrance of the five foot wide passage and I got worried.

     Thunderstorms had plagued me all day and now they gathered in all directions. I had heard of people being swept to their deaths in such places and sometimes the torrents came from miles away. What to do? I started into the canyon which constricted quickly and dropped ten feet over large boulders which were obviously the remains of a waterfall. That was all I needed to see, and trusting my intuition, it convinced me to turn around and get the heck out of there. I snapped a few pictures but a blinding flash of lightning and rolling waves of thunder hastened my retreat and I high tailed it back towards the road as fast as I could.  Forty five minutes later, opening the door and quickly throwing my pack inside the truck, the heavens let loose and it rained buckets for an hour.