As most of you know by now – I retired from Nikon in early January. After a couple of months of decompressing – it was time to start something new. I was lucky enough to have my old friend and former employee ask me to be a guest instructor at a workshop in Moab Utah. Bill runs a series of workshop know as His Light Workshops. If you want to attend a great workshop, taught by really incredible people. I urge you to check out their website for a complete schedule.
John “Snake” Barrett, Bill Fortney and his partner Jim Begley at “Park Avenue” in Arches National Park. This particular workshop was to not just teach great landscape photography but to bring a new element to the workshop. Night sky photography and timelapse work. Two of the things I enjoy doing. Snake and I had played around with some night shooting and timelapse work in Bodie last year and have seriously pursued it ever since. We teamed up to bring this new subject to this event.
We arrived Tues and did some early scouting in the park to pick some locations to take the group. If you have not been to Arches and Canyonlands – I urge you to put it on your travel list. It is an incredible place.
This is a better view of “Park Avenue” – Its one of the first formations you come to in the park.
The park is just one great view after another. Great places for instruction how to capture one of our countries great landscapes. Balance Rock (below)at sunset and Fiery Furnace seemed to be two spots that might be great for shooting the Milky Way and doing some night time time-lapse work. We would have to wait a day since the Milky Way doensn’t rise in the SE sky until about 3am this time of year.
Since the weather was not great (some clouds at night) we decided to do some testing before takeing the students out in the middle of the night. The tests indicated that our choices for locations would work well.
The students arrived Wed and got settled in and we started some daytime shooting (sunrise and sunset of course). I can see that this is not going to be a workshop where sleep is going to be plentiful. A quick trip to “Dead Horse Point” yealed some great photos for the team and students.
Such a beautiful setting – seemed like the right place for a group photo (photo by Bill Fortney) – More on the trip and the nighttime shooting in another post shortly. Thanks for looking,
Really enjoyed your help, you did great!!!