Dean Spieth

Dean grew up in Kansas during the space race to the moon, played trumpet in band and orchestra, graduated with majors in Astronomy and Physics from the University of Arizona (1973), and worked as a project engineer for the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Lab at Edwards AFB in California (1973-1977). He spent the rest of his rocket and space telescope career in the Denver metro area (Martin Marietta aka Lockheed-Martin, Ball Aerospace, etc). He retired from aerospace in 2014, moved to Montana to be closer to Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks, the northern Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Northwest, then in 2020 moved to the Black Hills closer to the easily accessible high country of Wyoming and Colorado with higher air quality.

Dean bought land in the Denver foothills in 1997 and built his Conifer home on weekends and holidays over several years, where he wrote the 2nd and 3rd editions of The Best Times to See the Greatest Wonders of the West, including color photos. He wrote the first edition of the book in 1993-1994, while living in his previous home in Evergreen.

The first edition of the book, the Best Times to See the Greatest Wonders of the West, although the content was good, turned out to be a rather poor black and white printing job from a Denver printer, and he stopped selling the book later in 1994. Others are still reselling used copies. The second edition was electronic (softcopy only) in full color, although a printout was recorded by the copyright office in 2008. The third edition was recently printed in color on quality glossy stock overseas and came out very well. Although a limited edition, it should be available for a few years.

The idea to develop a travel book to identify the best times and best spots in the western national parks occurred during a trip to Canada in the summer of 1993. By September he took a return trip to Glacier to identify the best turnouts, and in a hurry to finish the first edition, left his film in the refrigerator back in Colorado. The recent Glacier snowfall produced such beautiful scenery he had to drive over Logan Pass to West Glacier to find pro film. Since it was the shop's last weekend, the salesman said he only had 120 Velvia film left - perfect and he bought all of it, resulting in superb images!

Dean used a variety of cameras, starting with a Kodak box camera that used 120 roll film. 35 mm cameras were used since high school. Larger cameras were later used for scenic photography, first trying 645 format which was too small, then 6x9 cm which was very good, then 4x5 inch which was too big (or more correctly too much trouble yet with very sharp pictures), then 6x7 cm and finally back to 6x9 which is an easy to use format and is equivalent to about 100 megapixels depending on film grain. The medium format cameras ironically also use 120 roll film, except film quality and cameras have greatly improved since the 1950s. He has since sold all his medium format film cameras, and replaced them with digital cameras up to 50 megapixels.

Astronomy, galaxies, cosmology, and scenic photography were his primary interests outside of work. He made an eight inch aperture telescope, took planetary and lunar photos, and developed B&W film while in high school. At the U of A, Tucson provided many colorful sunsets in the good ole days of Kodachrome color film, as well as trips to the Grand Canyon area. He became familiar with southern and northern California while stationed at Edwards AFB. Working in Colorado from 1977 thru 2014 enabled him to become intimately familiar with Colorado and the Rocky Mountains from New Mexico to Canada.