If I Were Going...: Stevens Family Calendar: January

This is part of a series about the Stevens Family Calendar (if you know, you know).

The January cover page

The first month on our 2024 calendar is dedicated to home and near home: Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming.

It evokes the feeling of the wild west, starting with a shot of Chimney Rock National Monument, which is about five hours from our house just southwest of Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

The uncropped version of the photo I used

I've been there twice – once with Caty and once with Scott, but apparently never blogged about it. You can read more here.

I opted to use the close-up of the Chimney instead of this one, but I like both

A great encounter

The next shot is a marvelous picture of a red-morph Eastern Screech-Owl that Caty captured very close to her home in Fort Collins.

Fort Collins a good place to see Owls and Eastern Screech-Owls aren't too hard to come by there.

The red morphs are more rare and both of us spent considerable time stalking it (as well as its more typical gray counterparts).

Caty got great shots in low light and rain

Caty and I were also thrilled to finally see at Great Gray Owl in Grand Teton National Park. You can read the story here.

Caty got much better photos than I did and hers is featured on the main page. One thing you can't easily tell is the size difference between these two Owls: the Screech is about eight inches tall, while the Great Grey (the largest Owl in North American), stands more than two feet tall.

Another of the Great Gray by Caty that we didn't use and three of the more
typical gray Eastern Screech in its adorable Owl-shaped hole; We didn't use
the left and right that I took; the center bottom by Caty was on the cover

In the middle if the left column, I used a gorgeous photo of a wild horse that Scott took in Wyoming.

The horse. The sky. The broad expanse of land. Does it get more western than that?

I chose the wide shot for the calendar because of the feeling of vastness it communicated,
but these other shots Scott took were also in contention.

Another great shot by Caty

And, the last photo on the left side of the cover page is a shot of a hot air balloon skimming Prospect Lake in Colorado Springs during the Labor Day Lift-Off that Caty took.

I sprinkled photos from that event throughout the calendar, mainly because hot air balloons bring color and drama. We have attended Labor Day Lift-Off and the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta several times in recent years.

Balloon shots I already discussed in my installment on the front and
back covers and the calendar opening

Every time we go, we end up with piles and piles of great shots, but I usually can't find a page to fit them in.

Two that didn't make the cut this year: Left: Caty Stevens; Right: Scott Stevens

This year was extra special because I gave Scott and Caty a ride on a Rainbow Ryder hot air balloon as an early Christmas gift.

Caty and Scott in the balloon

The page featured one of Scott's aerials

They were able to get some fabulous shots of the Labor Day Lift-Off from the air.

I used one looking down on the launch field (right) on the calendar section of the January page. It's a completely different perspective that's not something you get every day.

This almost didn't happen because windy conditions on the day they were scheduled for their ride grounded all the balloons. It doesn't take much to do that (10 mph), so grounding is common. Fortunately, the next day was calm enough and they were able to take off and see what balloon pilots see when they lift off.

A few more of Scott's I couldn't use

Another place that often makes calendar appearance is Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming because, well, it is one of the most beautiful places on Earth and it's pretty close to home (nine hours from our house, which, in Colorado terms, is close).

This place keeps showing up

I try not to be too repetitive in the calendars, but somehow Grand Teton always slips in.

I did exercise some restraint; these didn't make it

Nor did these

Yellowstone National Park also often makes an appearance. On the January pages, it just showed up as a backdrop for a couple of Pronghorns grazing on a hill.

I opted to use the closer shot on the left rather than the wide shot

Of course, the thing that catches your eye the most on the cover page is Scott's marvelous ultimate western shot: a cowboy on a bucking bronco caught at the Westcliffe Stampede Rodeo in Westcliffe, Colorado.

I had to do a little Photoshop magic on the background to make the cowboy pop!

Using this shot was unusual since I generally shy away from featuring photos of people in our calendar, opting instead for scenery and wildlife. But, Scott's images were so compelling (and he liked them so much), I couldn't resist.

I also used this one in the calendar

It's a fluke that we got these photos. We had gone to Westcliffe on the spur of the moment to enjoy some mountain scenery and to photograph the night sky. Westcliffe is only two hours from our house, but, because it is a recognized "dark sky" location, we were staying overnight. We didn't know there was a rodeo going on. We didn't even know that Westcliffe had a rodeo!

It was a relatively small, casual affair and we attended both a paid-entry session and a free qualifying session. Just some good small-town fun.

The rodeo lights interfered with getting good Milky Way shots, but Scott came away with some nice western action pictures.

And, here are a few I had to sacrifice

A device that I use to spice up the calendar is putting photos on the unused squares of the calendar page.

I have already discussed the rodeo, Pronghorn and hot air balloon shots. Let's look at the rest.

A typical sight in the American west is the beautiful Northern Harrier, a regal raptor with a unique Owl-like face and a habit of rapidly soaring close to the ground, making photographing one a huge challenge.

The shot I used

Females and juveniles are brown, but the male is gray, black and white, earning it its nickname, "The Gray Ghost." Seeing a male is not that common. Getting close enough to photograph one is even less common. So, I was thrilled to have a front-row seat to some aerial acrobatics, Gray Ghost-style, at Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in Denver.

I captured some interesting maneuvers.


Two other good ones I didn't Colorado, of course, has some spectacular scenery. And, we spend a lot of time photographing it.

A big, jagged mountain

This mountain outside of Ridgway, Colorado, deep in the Rockies, was taken just as the sun was rising on a very chilly fall morning.

It's not your typical Colorado shot. There's no lake, no aspen trees, nothing but the essence of what the Rocky Mountains are: impressive pillars of solid granite jutting into the sky.

I had only one other scenery shot I rejected for this page. I used shots from these featured locales one other pages we'll discuss later. January was a bit of a catch-all, where I pulled from other "buckets." As a result, I didn't really have as many "rejects" here.

Miscellany: the sunflower appeared on the front cover and the other three on the back

I chose not to use this photo of Lake San Cristobal in southern Colorado taken
from a lookout on gorgeous Highway 149

It is impossible to talk about Colorado without mentioning Moose. In my informed opinion, my home state is the best place on Earth to find and photograph these magnificent and somewhat goofy creatures.

Snuggles

Every year in the late spring/early summer, Caty and I go looking for baby Moose on an adventure we call Moosecapade. 2023 was not a great year for baby Moose encounters, but we did have one particularly good one on the east side of Rocky Mountain National Park. Caty's photo of a tender moment between mother and child won the calendar lottery from a number she and I took.

Other contenders; Top photos: Caty Stevens

I always have some random animal and bird photos to consider for the calendar and I had a few more in the bucket for this page.

A herd of Elk in Grand Teton that just didn't fit in

An American White Pelican also in Grand Teton

We saw a surprisingly large number of Beavers in Grand Teton;
they were cute, but didn't make the cut

And, finally: trains. We spent a weekend looking for fall foliage in Colorado and found we were a bit too early. So, instead, we went chasing trains, getting lots of photos of both the Silverton-Durango and the Cumbres & Toltec Railroad.

Both are steam engine-powered trains that carry tourists through some phenomenal Rocky Mountain scenery. We have ridden the Silverton-Durango train, but have never actually been on the Cumbres & Toltec. After all, the photos of the train are often better than the photos from the train.