Crystal Mill #1. You-know-where, Colorado, 2012
Yesterday I mentioned that one thing that happens when you set out to photograph one of America’s iconic western landscapes you will undoubtedly find yourself with other photographers. Sometimes you’ll find yourself with literally hundreds of other photographers and in the midst of a forest of overlapping tripods! Think Old Faithful in Yellowstone, for example…or Lower Yellowstone Falls, or Glacier Point in Yosemite, or Mather Point on the Grand Canyon, or Maroon Bells in Colorado, or Delicate or Mesa Arches in Utah…and so on. Dawn and dusk, of course, are the peak hours.
It can be fun to get to know a few of these photographers who are at your elbow, as I did this past weekend.
At the Crystal Mill, after a bouncy 4×4 ride over five miles of spectacular but rocky, narrow track, I ran into three interesting people, Denis and Kim Dessoliers from California, and Shad Pipes, from New Mexico. We all spent some time searching out angles and waiting for light at the Mill before heading back into falling darkness for dinner at the Slow Groovin’ BBQ place in Marble (good eats there!).
Shad was a gregarious and interesting guy with the itch to make more of his living from photography and his website shows he is on the right track with quite a variety of work in his galleries. Kim seemed more like me–closer to the beginning/intermediate stage of this long journey toward mastering the art. It was her husband Denis, though, who had us all humbled with his images. He flicked one after another at us on his smart phone and they were all superb, sharp, color landscape images, typically made with his medium format Hasselblad.
Just when you think you are making some progress with your images, you run into someone like Denis who shows you just how far you have yet to go! You can see what I mean here. Amazingly, he has only been at it seriously for two years–two years pretty much full time, though, lets be clear. He has already begun to sell his work (no surprise there.)
The next evening, up on McClure Pass, while waiting for the sunset, we met Damian, an assistant photographer with Brian Bailey Photography. With radical hair and and even more radical lens (800mm???) attached to his camera, he told me stories of his work with Brian Bailey including one job that had him hiking well above timberline with a lighting set, heavy duty batteries and a pile of camera and climbing gear to do an unusually spectacular rock climbing shot. It even turned out he knew one of my old climbing partners from a previous life, Jeff Achey. Small world.
So, when you go to an oft photographed site, and you run into that long line of tripods and photogs, start chatting up the guy or gal next to you. You never know what you might learn!
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