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Rodeos

Wendy Saunders: Documenting Life’s Memorable Moments

by Jason Schneider

If you had to characterize the amazingly varied, brilliantly composed, always incisive work of Wendy Saunders in a few choice words, “Photojournalism as Art” would come pretty close to the mark. While her compelling images run the gamut from society and active lifestyle weddings to special events, rodeos, western themes, and sports fishing, she is always the consummate photojournalist telling a heartfelt story, and, at the same time, an impassioned artist transforming the content of life’s fleeting moments into timeless images that have the unmistakable ring of truth. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Virginia Commonwealth University, and her art background is clearly evident in the beauty and depth of her vision. Her business card says Wendy Saunders, Photojournalist, but when asked if she considers herself an artist, she is emphatic. “Absolutely!” she says. “I have gone full circle from high-end weddings to gritty rodeos, but I have always been an artist and I am now creating more fine art prints and editorial images than ever before.” Her mesmerizing images of the Greeley Independence Stampede, National Western Stock Show, and National Finals Rodeo have graced the pages of such leading western publications as American Cowboy and Western Horseman.

An acclaimed professional for over 28 years, Wendy Saunders, along with the renowned master Dennis Reggie, was one of the pioneers of photojournalistic wedding photography that defined what has become a popular genre. However, four years ago she gave up “one of the most prolific and powerful public profiles in professional photography” to move to the small Colorado town of Pagosa Springs (about an hour from Durango) to get back to her roots and pursue her passion for western and rodeo photojournalism. She still shoots weddings and events, and is the president and owner of The Wendy Saunders Companies (with offices in Pagosa Springs, and Lafayette, a town near Boulder) where she functions as a graphic designer, and art director. She also heads up webbyIMAGES, a website design and marketing seminars company. Despite her intensive schedule she still manages to give back to her community, conducting PhotoLEARN Children’s Camps and Adult Sessions, and acted as the publicity director of the Fort Lewis College Theater Department in Durango. A new marketing and Public Relations position for her is with Global Direct Homes & Interiors, which is a revolutionary concept of factory-direct home building company

Saunders does most of her current work with a quartet of DSLRs, two Canon EOS 20Ds and two 30Ds, and an optical arsenal of six Tamron lenses, but she still uses a 35mm Canon EOS for making traditional black-and-white art prints, mostly shot on Kodak T-Max 3200. “I like to carry up to four cameras at once with different lenses already attached,” says Saunders, “because I’d rather juggle cameras than change lenses on the fly. The lightness and excellent balance of Tamron lenses is a big advantage given the way I work. Mostly I shoot available light at ISO 800 on my DSLRs because I often work in dim light. My three favorite lenses are the Tamron 11-18mm f/4.5-5.6 Di II, an ultra-wide zoom that’s great for expansive indoor coverage, the fast Tamron SP AF70-200mm f/2.8 Di Macro, a fast tele-zoom that’s perfect for shooting in low light at indoor rodeos, and the Tamron AF28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 VC, which has built-in Vibration Compensation that lets me capture critically sharp, natural looking images handheld at unbelievably slow shutter speeds.”

“All my Tamron lenses, including the SP AF14mm f/2.8 and my trusty old 300mm f/2.8 super telephoto, deliver outstanding image quality—sharp flare-free images with saturated colors—even at the widest apertures and in bad light,” notes Saunders. “However my real workhorse lens is the AF28-300mm VC which provides amazing framing flexibility on both my film and digital SLRs. Unlike many rodeo photographers I don’t just concentrate on the main event—I want to capture the before and after scenes and details that really convey the essence of the rodeo experience. For this kind of approach, the Tamron 28-300mm Vibration Compensation lens is indispensable—and it gives me the image quality I need when I crop images to square format for magazine publication. It’s phenomenally light in weight for its range and it covers everything from expansive interiors to distant details in seconds. Just by turning the well-placed zoom collar I can shoot an entire event without juggling cameras.”

“That unique combination of responsiveness and image quality is the basic reason the Tamron 28-300mm VC is my workhorse lens,” says Saunders, “but there’s also the matter of ergonomics. Like many women, I have small hands, but this is one wide-to-long-tele zoom that’s easy for me to handhold, and switching to manual focusing is a snap— you just flip a button that falls right under your finger. If I’m shooting a rodeo guy on a bucking bronco I may have only four seconds to capture the perfect action image, and that’s when the ability to flip back and forth between auto and manual focus is essential. The size and weight of the 28-300mm VC also complement my fairly lightweight, medium size Canons just perfectly—it’s a supremely functional unit.”

“But ultimately it all comes back to Tamron’s optical technology, says Saunders, “and the great strides they’ve made in improving image quality. The 28-300mm VC wins the performance prize hands down, delivering superb images at 300mm and all the way on down to 28mm. Shooting rodeos is a tough assignment—there are severe limitations on where you can stand, and if the event starts at 7 o’clock and the light is bad there’s really nothing you can do to control it. That’s when my 28-300mm VC really saves the day. It lets me capture low flare images in high-flare situations, and shoot at slow shutter speeds without camera shake, so I can tell the whole story, revealing the big picture and all the little details before, during and after the event. About 50 percent of the pictures I select as finals from my coverage are taken with that one great lens, and since my basic training was on film, I’m a disciplined shooter—only 10 percent of my images are adjusted in Photoshop.”

“Having the right equipment is essential,” observes Wendy, “and I am sure that Tamron lenses, especially the 28-300mm VC, really help me to do my job a lot more effectively and efficiently. Of course in the end it’s up to the photographer to make a great shot, but having a superb wide-to-long-tele zoom lens allows your story to evolve seamlessly—you can zoom in to see something important you may not have noticed before, which enriches the whole dynamic creative process. It’s a lens that opens up your mind—it’s as though you’re a fly on the wall free to observe and capture anything your creative instincts respond to. That’s thinking outside the box, and maximizing your creative flexibility—in short the things that set my images apart and raise the best of them to the level of fine art.”

Learn more about Tamron’s VC technology and the lens that gives you four extra stops for amazing hand-hold-ability.

TIP FOR ABOVE IMAGE:

Follow the action: When shooting an action subject like this bull rider, I always anticipate where it will move and still remain within the frame. Many photographers would just zoom in on the main subject and fire away. But to convey the sense of the action more effectively, I took this shot at a wider focal length, placing the contestant and bull rider on the left of the frame, and including the bullfighting clown entering from the right. By resisting the urge to work large in the frame, your camera’s multi-zone auto-focus system will work more efficiently, making it easier to follow the action. The effective Vibration Compensation of the Tamron 28-300mm VC lens let me get a critically sharp image (except for a bit of mood-capturing subject movement) at 1/30 sec at f/11.