Back in January, I lead a Death Valley Photo Workshop. We spent five days in the park photographing dunes, salt flats, canyons, volcanic craters and more sand dunes and overlooks. It was right after the government shutdown had ended, so some of the roads were still closed due to debris covering the surface from floods.
The road closures meant that my entire first day’s plans were thrown out the window. But, like I do on most of my workshops, I improvise when I have to and rearranged the schedule a bit to account for the closures. You do what you have to do. I do like to have some flexibility in my schedules though to account for conditions and closures.
Overall, we had excellent weather conditions with highs in the 70s and lows in the 40s. We even had some fun clouds. The weather seemed perfect for a mid-winter photography getaway. The participants on this Death Valley photo workshop were all repeats save one person, who left after the first sunrise — I can’t say that I’ve ever had that happen before and doubt it will again. It was a great group of people who were fun to be around. You can’t ask for better than that. Good weather and good people and great scenery makes a great trip.
I’m still working through my photos from the trip, but here are the standout images.
This first set of images comes from the first 24 hours we were there. Several of us arrived early the day before and met up for an informal sunset shoot that wasn’t part of the workshop. We went to Dante’s View. I had a shot ready to go that was avoiding all the people that were there when a hiker stepped into my shot. I just went with it and got the first shot. After the sun set, the color in the eastern sky exploded and I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to find a good composition. The second shot is my second favorite from the trip. The third shot is from sunrise on Badwater Basin. I ran across a heart made of salt — just in time for Valentine’s Day.
My personal favorite part of Death Valley are the sand dunes. We spent two nights and a morning photographing the dunes. These are a selection of images for those days. There hadn’t been a wind storm in a couple of days, so there were tracks all over one section of dunes that we went to, but the others were clear of the footprints.
The night sky is amazingly dark in Death Valley and we spent one night in a canyon shooting the night sky and after dinner one night several of us decided to shoot the train in the resort. To get stars and the train exposed in a single image, I turned a ND grad upside down to darken the train and allow the stars to show up.
My favorite image from the entire trip comes from the last sunset of the trip. Most everyone was setup on a different spot and I felt like exploring and invited everyone along. Only two people followed and we found this spot.
The final three images are from different sunrises and sunsets. Each had a slightly different feel to them.
Those are my main picks from the trip. I usually shoot for 5 good images a day when I’m shooting on my own. It was a five-day trip and I got 17 that stood out to me. That’s pretty good considering that I was also teaching a workshop. When everyone is a repeat and all have a good handle on shooting, it’s easier for me to shoot now and then. I’m satisfied with the results. I’ve now seen a bunch of shots from the participants and feel like that while I did okay; they did much better. And that’s about the best feeling you can get when you’re a teacher.