Meet Vyvyan Brunst | Photographer & Wild Horse Advocate

We had the good fortune of connecting with Vyvyan Brunst and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Vyvyan, how has your background shaped the person you are today?
I was born in England, in the city of Reading, some 40 miles or so along the Thames west of London. When I was two my parents moved to Switzerland. My father had accepted a job teaching English and Russian at the International School of Geneva. He’d spent part of his military service in the 1950s at Cambridge, learning Russian in a low-level intelligence program. My pre-school and early elementary school years were wonderful ones, along the shores of Lac Léman in that cosmopolitan city, and before we left for the United States I had picked up French, more or less on the streets, playing with local kids.

We drove across the U.S. in August of 1967 in an old Opel station wagon, stopping to see relatives in Ontario and visiting Expo ’67 in Montreal. Our route to southern California took us through Colorado, to the Four Corners region, with stops along the way at many of the familiar tourist spots: Mt. Rushmore and the Corn Palace in South Dakota, Rocky Mountain National Park, Mesa Verde, curious roadside attractions along Route 66, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley. In the evenings, we’d set up camp at tent sites and I’d wander off along the trails or among the pines, chatting to neighboring travelers’ children.

We repeated the drive across the country in 1973 — this time in a rusted Mercedes Benz we’d bought and repaired while in Belgium (the family had moved several times in the intervening years as my father changed jobs, eventually becoming Head of English at a school in Monterey CA). When I describe my childhood and early teen years, people often ask if my parents were in the army or if I didn’t miss having a more permanent home, but the fact is my folks just liked to travel. And I learned to feel at home just about anywhere, whether it was an off-highway motel or a patch of desert or a cabin in the woods.

Those formative experiences exposed me to a widely diverse population — to small-town Midwesterners and Las Vegas gamblers, to big-city hustlers, regular working folk, San Francisco hippies, dreamers, environmentalists, inventors in living rooms and garages across this extraordinary country. I learned that if you just take people as they come, whatever their political views or social background, you find most of them want the same things: rewarding work, a fair shake, a place to raise a family, a welcoming community, an opportunity to use their gifts.

I was eight years old when we first set foot in the United States; I’m sixty-four now, a Colorado resident for most of the last quarter century.

While growing up in southern California I met a teacher, a colleague of my father’s, called Ramsey Harris. He was Indian-born, from Bombay (now Mumbai) and he was the first of a number of encounters I would have with men who seemed to have a natural affinity for animals. A tinkerer and amateur scientist, Ramsey taught me to look closely at the world. Students on campus in Claremont, in the San Bernardino foothills, would sometimes bring him injured birds, which he would nurse back to health. If one died, we’d bury it and he would tell me to wait until it had been stripped of skin and feathers and then learn its bones. Visiting him meant you walked through a curtain of hummingbirds that gathered at the feeders by his front door. We joined school expeditions through the Mojave desert and east to the Grand Canyon to unearth fossils, many of which are now housed at the Raymond Alf Museum in Claremont.

When I eventually took up photography in Monterey and Carmel I wanted most of all to photograph wildlife, especially birds, which I also drew, selling ink drawings and prints at local galleries. I still photograph birds, but my subjects now also include family groups, portraits, landscapes, and recently, wild horses. Three years ago I started a photography agency with David Fanning, an endurance hiker and good friend from Fort Collins. David has completed the length of the Colorado Trail seven times. He prefers to travel light, and so we called our business Ultralight Images LLC (www.ultralightimages.co).

My wife and I live off-grid, on a high desert mesa in the San Luis Valley that is home to 300 or more mustangs, feral horses, descendants of those originally brought to the country by the Spanish in the 16th century. The horses come and go on private land for the most part. They are one of the very few species of large mammals that have learned to survive in the harsh environment of this sagebrush steppe, where the summers are hot and dry and the winters are dry and bitter cold, where there are no streams or springs and more coyotes, bobcats, and prairie rattlesnakes than people.

Our wild horses are unique among the mustang populations in the Mountain West. Bands of horses in the Pryor Mountains, or on any of the BLM-managed herd management areas in Colorado, range on public lands. You have to set out to see them in their own territory. On our Wild Horse Mesa, you’re more likely to look out your cabin window in the morning and find them grazing on rabbitbrush or big sagebrush. A neighbor is often woken up in the early hours when they kick at his door. He once helped deliver a foal in a March snowstorm when the mare was having a difficult birth.

But the challenges faced by our wild horses are similar to those on public lands. With few natural predators anymore, and with their preternatural ability to adapt, wild horse populations can double every four or five years. That brings them into conflict with landowners, leads to animal-vehicle collisions, and exposes them to possible abuse. In 2023 I founded a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to study and protect the horses of San Pedro Mesa, using my photographs to help educate the wider community about these remarkable animals.

My name is Vyvyan Brunst, and I’m a Colorado photographer and wild horse advocate.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I’d like to tell you a story, one passed down to me by my father.

His grandfather — my great-grandfather — was a hard rock miner in Globe-Miami, Arizona. He was a jigger boss, a first-line supervisor at the copper mine.

There was a cave-in. The lower levels were filling up with water, debris trapping the shift still down there, in the pitch black. My great-grandfather went back in and pulled a few of the men out to safety.

The way the local paper told the story, he had to jump down into the hole, unable in the darkness to see if his feet would touch solid ground, or if he would just keep falling, one level to another. He died of complications from his injuries in San Diego, but many years later.

Some of that courage must have rubbed off on my parents, who traveled incessantly — the willingness to jump into the unknown: places, people, customs and cultures — despite their fear, three boys in tow. So when it comes time to sell up, move to another town, start a new business, with resources my parents and their parents never had, for all its nagging uncertainty, I think of the hard rock miner with his legs dangling over the edge, the onrush of rock dust and freezing air, the shouts of the men below. Here goes nothing, I hear him say. Piece of cake.

Here are three thoughts about business, particularly about risk-taking:

1. If you’re going to take risks in business, make sure you’re doing something you love. First, you’re more likely to succeed: you’ll put in more hours, go the extra mile, act out of passion and not necessity. Second, if things go south you’ll have learned something about a pursuit that matters to you. Third, clients can tell if you’re just going through the motions. Emotional investment yields excellence. It’s palpable.

2. It’s a cliche, I know, but success doesn’t create champions, it only crowns them. It only gives them moments of satisfaction. Surprisingly often, it doesn’t even do that. Anthony Hopkins once said, “You know, I meet young people, and they want to act and they want to be famous, and I tell them, when you get to the top of the tree, there’s nothing up there.” Failure is unpleasant, but it’s also underrated. To achieve something meaningful you need persistence, time, and failure. Take risks. Try things. Fail. Fail again. Fail better. Risk-taking is much easier when you’re not afraid of falling on your face.

You need time because time’s perspective reveals truths that weren’t apparent at first. I dropped out of graduate school when after three years I was burned out, taking classes year-round, running myself ragged and struggling to pass Mandarin classes, which were required courses. In retrospect, years later, I realized the classes weren’t where I came up short. My poor choices, believing I didn’t have to take the advice of people who knew better, believing I didn’t have to take care of myself, not respecting good relationships. That’s where I came up short.

I also realized that single-mindedly pursuing something that gave me little satisfaction was the worst possible use of my time.

3. Know why you’re doing what you’re doing, including why you’re taking risks. My father wanted me to become a university professor. His father had worked in the railyards, and for my dad, the idea one of his sons might get a Ph.D. was validation of everything he believed in about the importance of education, about making good. It added some polish as well to the family name. My mentors were uniformly supportive. Having their support and their praise was flattering. Until I realized I’d soured on academia long before and was only continuing in order to please others.

When my great-grandfather stood at the lip of the mine, hearing the cries below from his crew after the cave-in, he knew why he had to jump: they were his responsibility, they needed his help; he jumped from simple compassion, and out of loyalty to his team. Know why you’re doing what you’re doing, including why you’re taking risks. Bring that conviction to your work.

David Fanning and I started Ultralight Images LLC, our little photography agency, in the middle of the pandemic. In many ways, it was the worst possible time to create a business that relied on in-person shoots and family portraits, and for which, traditionally, weddings and senior photos tend to pay the bills. We honed our skills with plenty of portraits of our own families and friends! And we weren’t afraid to follow our hearts in choosing subject matter, whether it was art photography, landscapes, or wildlife. We’re still guided by what we love to shoot, rather than by what may be commercially appealing. It may take longer to build the business, but you know what they say — do what you love and you’ll never work another day in your life!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I gave up drinking ten years ago, so as a host, particularly when it comes to finding restaurants and watering holes, I may not be the best choice. The craft beer industry doesn’t need much promotion from me, anyway: the brewpubs and microbreweries in Fort Collins and all along the Front Range are getting plenty of well-deserved press. Still, when it comes to eating out, while in northern Colorado, my wife and I were big fans of Chimney Park Restaurant in Windsor. Farther south, in our current stomping grounds in the San Luis Valley, it’s difficult to beat the Friar’s Fork in Alamosa.

Breakfast and coffee on days two or three would be at Milagros Coffee House in Alamosa or the recently opened San Luis Coffee Company on Main Street in San Luis. Milagros is a nonprofit, part of a social services program operated by La Puente in the Valley. The San Luis coffeehouse is a marvelous neighborhood enterprise that roasts its own coffee and covers its walls with local folk art, photography, and multimedia votives, some of it drawing from the rich Hispanic culture of Colorado’s oldest town.

But my visiting friend would have to be able to appreciate high desert evenings. With virtually no light pollution, we’re a dark sky destination for Milky Way photographers and stargazers. The week wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Great Sand Dunes National Park — the view of snow-capped 14,000-foot peaks from the tallest dunes in North America is striking, unforgettable.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
In 2013 I joined Poudre Wilderness Volunteers, a group of more than 300 U.S. Forest Service volunteers based in Northern Colorado. They describe what they do as hiking and riding with a purpose: to patrol the backcountry in the Canyon Lakes Ranger District and to help educate folks about Leave No Trace principles and what they call the Authority of the Resource, the requirements the natural environment itself has that should shape our behavior when we’re out on the trail. PWV was instrumental in reconnecting me with wilderness in a way I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid. It also renewed my early interest in wildlife and landscape photography. It’s an exceptionally well-run organization, a model for similar volunteer groups nationwide, and it deserves the spotlight.

Website: https://www.ultralightimages.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ultralight.images

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wildhorsesatthedoor

Image Credits
Vyvyan Brunst