Seeing through a special lens

Upvalley photographer has eye for the outdoors

By CAROLYN YOUNGER
For the Register

Some people wear their hearts on their sleeves. Jennifer Schooley’s rides on a Canon 20D camera.

Not much escapes the scrutiny of Schooley’s telephoto lens — not her fellow Angwin firefighters, not the local landscape and certainly not the doings of her three boys, James, Loran and DeWayne, or their rescued black Lab, Ranger.

Photography, she said recently, as she and her sons fired off their cameras in a St. Helena vineyard, “is the heart and soul of what I love to do.”

Visitors to the St. Helena Library’s art gallery last month got a glimpse of what that is.

In addition to Schooley’s own award-winning photos — including several of rescued wolves and one of a majestic sunflower — there were photos taken by her children, each of whom shows photographic promise.

Schooley’s sons are shooting their own award-winning photos with refurbished cameras their mother found online.

The oldest, James, 14, captured awards at both the Napa County Fair and the Town and Country Fair for his eclectic entries. He turned his camera on a colorful mallard duck and captured it and its reflection during a family trip to Lassen State Park’s Manzanita Lake. He also photographed a Blue Angels F-18, an inquisitive harbor seal, the panorama of Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay, a lone lighthouse on the north coast, and an eerie image of a firefighter taken during an Angwin Fire Academy exercise.

Loran, 11, and DeWayne, 7, have also come in for photographic recognition for their contributions at Napa’s two fairs. Ribbons went to Loran’s shots of Jenner’s Goat Rock beach and an impressively yellow and sleek Lamborghini. DeWayne earned prizes for a portrait of his brother, Loran, and a photo he took of a long-legged crested crane dressed to the nines in brilliant blue feathers.

Schooley’s own list of award-winners include a view from the bluffs at Jenner, a weathered Civil War cannon at Gettysburg, the bars of slave pens in Charleston, S.C., a portrait of Angwin’s Deputy Fire Chief Ken Trumble, a mustard blossom playing host to an industrious honeybee, as well as the sunflower growing at the edge of an Oakville vineyard.

Schooley came to Angwin in 1976 and graduated from Pacific Union College with a degree in communications. She worked at Angwin’s radio station through its various incarnations and call letters — and even helped build its studio before taking time off to raise her children.

Among Schooley’s own treasured memories from growing up on a small ranch in the Central Valley are her family’s summer camping trips. The one item that always went with her? A small camera.

“Yosemite was like a backyard to me,” she said. “My mom and dad both loved camping and they saw to it we saw as much of the West as we could. We camped up and down the state and across the Rockies and saw the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. I absolutely fell in love with my country. I’m determined to do the same with my kids.”

Schooley took a photography class at PUC but developing her own film soon became too expensive. With the advent of digital cameras, however, “my computer became my photo lab,” she said.

Like many parents, she has commemorated her sons’ first days of school, their sports activities, wild rides in PUC Elementary School’s annual soapbox derby, the boys’ introduction to camping, her youngest son’s summertime experiment with a Mohawk haircut. Unlike the average family snapshot, however, most are action shots that capture unguarded expressions of concentration, elation, wonder or out-and-out delight.

The avid photographer considered herself an amateur until a trip to the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center in the Colorado Rockies. The photos she took there caught the attention of a friend who hung one in her office. The ensuing support and recognition of Schooley’s talents “opened the door and one thing led to another,” Schooley said.

She has since landed commissions for professional brochures, a series on Calistoga Little League players and a PUC graduation, but Schooley also takes her camera into the workplace — in her case, Angwin’s Volunteer Fire Department, where she earned the rank of Firefighter II in 2007 and is currently the department’s public information officer.

Although Schooley, a single parent, is selling her photographs and working at several jobs, the faltering economy has made her wonder if she’ll ever accomplish another dream, that of going back to school for a master’s degree in social work.

“I’m trying to be a full-time everything, but everything is coming up short,” she said.

So, when she needs to refocus she grabs her camera and heads out.

“I love nature. I love the quiet. I take a deep breath and get a whole new perspective.”

Napa Valley Register Copyright © 2009