$3,495
$3,495
Death Valley National Park is the largest national park in the United States and one of the most exciting places to photograph. Featuring the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America, the park is surrounded by mountains that rise to over 11,000 feet. Yet, most photography workshops barely scratch the surface of what this fantastic park has to offer. Many of the park’s “best” locations are only accessible using 4×4 high-clearance vehicles on rough backcountry roads.
Using our 4×4 vehicles, we’ll trek to three of the most remote and spectacular areas of the park that seldom get seen: the Racetrack Playa – the only place in the world where the “sailing stones” are found; the Eureka Sand Dunes – the tallest dunes in California and possibly North America; and the Ubehehe Crater – a half-mile wide volcanic crater located in the northern half of Death Valley. We’ll photograph these unique locations at sunrise and sunset as the light creates stunning landscapes and abstracts. We’ll also visit some of the iconic Death Valley locations near Furnace Creek, including Zabriskie Point and Golden Canyon, the Mesquite Sand Dunes, Dante’s View, Badwater Salt Flats, and Cow Creek.
The desert can appear colorless and lifeless in the day’s intense heat and harsh light. But during the sunrise and twilight hours of the day, the rich textures and patterns of the canyons, dry washes, and dunes come alive in the golden light.
John Bosma Fine Arts Photography is an Authorized Permittee of the National Park Service.
The majority of our days will start early, before sunrise. After a quick coffee or tea, we’ll be off to get into position at a location in the best light of the day with breakfast in the field to maximize our shooting time. We’ll often continue until mid-to-late morning before heading back to Basecamp.
Back at Basecamp, we’ll have time for off-loading memory cards, classroom lectures & instruction, working on our images, one-on-one guidance, or time to relax. Then, in the mid-to-late afternoon, we’ll head out again to capture the evening skies, getting the most out of the sunset and shooting the stars in the night sky.
More important than just getting you to some of the best and most remote locations at the best times of the day, this five-day landscape photography workshop will teach you how to visualize an image, how to plan your shoot, how to capture your image in the field, and how to bring your image to life using a variety of post-production techniques.
In the Field:
We’ll learn how to scout and visualize a scene, compose a ground/sky/sea landscape to show scale and tell a story, how to manage complex highlight and shadow scenes, how and when to use filters, how to plan your images for a blended blue hour composite, how to focus your camera at night to capture pin sharp stars and foreground, and how to use apps like PhotoPills to plan a shoot. We’ll also use techniques such as dynamic bracketing and exposure blending, focus stacking and focal length blending, neutral density filters, and stacking for noise reduction.
In the Classroom:
We’ll spend time developing your post-production workflow – learning when Lightroom is enough and when you need to move your work into Photoshop. We’ll learn how to use techniques such as luminosity masks to create and solve contrast, color, and blending issues; how to blend multiple images together in Photoshop to create blue hour blends, focal length blends, and exposure blends; how to use start stacking to create pin sharp starry night skies; how to create Orton glows and sharpen your final image; and how to use apps like ProPanel to increase your efficiency.
You’ll benefit from hours of capture time in the field with an instructor by your side, and classroom instruction as you learn new techniques and strategies for creating dynamic images.
What’s Included in Your Tuition:
- 5 nights lodging / 4.5 training days
- Field meals and snacks
- All ground transportation during the workshop
- Workshop course materials
- In-the-field photographic training
- Online prep & orientation classes prior to the workshop
- Post-production classes and techniques during the workshop
- Online post-production classes after the workshop
What’s Not Included in Your Tuition:
- Transportation to/from your home to Basecamp
- Lodging beyond the 5 nights included in the workshop
- Meals
- Alcoholic beverages
- Travel Medical and Trip Cancellation Insurance
- Personal expenses, gratuities, and anything not listed as included
Please see our How to Prepare For Your Workshop page for guidelines on workshop prep, gear, and packing. Approximately 90 days before your workshop, you will be sent a PDF with more specific instructions.
