John Fielder

John Fielder is a nationally renowned photographer, publisher, teacher and preservationist. He hikes and skis hundreds of miles in Colorado alone each year – and drives thousands - in order to record on film its most sublime natural places.

For the past 30 years, no one has traveled this state quite like John Fielder, from its rolling plains to the soaring Rocky Mountains and the Western Slope’s remote plateaus and river canyons.

He visited Colorado at the age of 14 during a school field trip from North Carolina. “In all my life, I have not forgotten my first sight of the Rockies rising up before me over the plains. I was simply smitten by this wall of snow capped peaks above a treeless plain. And the word C-O-L-O-R- A-D-O, it was the most poetic name for a place I had ever heard. I realized that moment that someone or something had guided me to this place, and that I belonged here for the rest of my life.”

Though he started his family and planted his Colorado roots as a department store executive, he ultimately turned his avocation into a career. He is the photographer of more than 30 exhibit-format and guidebooks, all but four about Colorado. He might be most well known for creating Colorado’s best selling book ever, Colorado” 1870-2000, which juxtaposes historic photographer William Henry Jackson’s images of the 19th-century landscape with those of today.

Fielder has worked tirelessly to promote the protection of Colorado’s open space and wild places. His photography has influenced people and legislation, earning him recognition including the University of Denver’s Ritchie Award for Corporate Responsibility, the University of Colorado’s Distinguished Service Award, and the Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Award. In 1992 Fielder helped found the Board of Great Outdoors Colorado, which uses lottery profits to protect open space and wildlife habitat. He speaks to thousands of people each year to rally support for land-use and environmental issues.