Our Journey Began
We were newly married and both of us had a tendency to be consumed by our work. The idea of Cattail Chronicles came into being as a means to allocate time on the weekends to be together, to do something together. Since we both enjoyed photography, “the something to do together” was obvious. We would spend some time on the weekends going out and photographing nature, landscapes, wildlife, or whatever we felt like. To add some spice to the adventure we would record our activities along the way and create a video to post on Youtube. Thus was born Cattail Chronicles. The name was derived from the pond behind our house and its surrounding cattails.
So we merged our hobbies together. We didn’t care about viewers or followers. We were just having fun. It did not take long to notice that our community of followers was growing faster than we were expecting. After all, this was a hobby, and we were doing it just for fun! Watching the number of our followers growing and some of our videos gain unexpectedly large numbers of views we started to entertain the idea of pivoting the Cattail Chronicles channel from a hobby to a business.
She was born with a camera in her hand.
Monique stole her first camera. Her sister wasn’t using it and she needed it for her high school photography class. So began the lifelong calling to photography. As a professional pet and portrait photographer and videographer, Monique had always dabbled in learning wildlife and nature photography. When spring 2020 arrived and dried up client work, she pointed her camera out the back door. Spending hours photographing herons, osprey, bald eagles, and more she eventually started a little Instagram account, Cattail Chronicles. The next year she spent months convincing Steve to start up a second YouTube channel. (she already has a channel for pet photography). He finally relented and now she enjoys photos and filming with her incredible sweetheart of a husband in the best place on the planet-Colorado.
First the stars then
Steve started his photography adventures with an old camera and a telescope in the north woods of Minnesota. His original inspiration was the the nighttime sky. His journey would eventually take him to the front range of Colorado where he expanded his photographic targets to include the landscape and wildlife of Colorado. For a time he wandered away from photography, being distracted by his career, family, and bicycle riding in the mountains. His first daughter reignited his passion for photography when she discovered that her mother’s cell phone could take photos. The two made quite a team wandering the countryside snapping photos of whatever was around them. As time went on the daughter went to school and began her own journey through life. By that time though another woman’s journey had crossed his. She was a photographer also, specializing in pet photography. The two were soon married. As the two paths merged, a common interest was discovered in photographing wildlife. Both could now wander the beautiful and majestic landscape of Colorado together and more deeply appreciate the other’s perspective. After a long series of discussions agreed to join forces and create Cattail Chronicles.