Lone Pine and Death Valley

A Workshop Sponsored By

Overview

The 2008 Lone Pine to Death Valley workshop will take us through some of the most celebrated (and filmed!) landscape in the country. The rockscape of the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine will likely bring back many visual memories -- from a zillion Westerns to Star Trek to Subaru car ads.

Aside from the rocks of the Alabama Hills, at the base of 14,505 ft. Mt. Whitney, we'll also be able to visit the High Sierra cascades at Whitney Portal; the site of the WWII Japanese Relocation Camp at Manzanar, and the site of Ansel's famous photograph of the boulders at Mt. Williamson; and of course, sunrise on the dunes in Death Valley. Death Valley isn't only dunes, though, and we will work with volcanic terrain, salt flats below sea level and even some mining ruins and the architectural oddities of Scotty's Castle.

Ansel made his great landscape images by driving around and LOOKING. Quoting Edward Weston, he said "If I wait around for something to happen HERE, I might miss something OVER THERE!" While we'll try to keep time on the road to a minimum, that's what this workshop will call for in part. We will be in some great spots for photography, but we'll also include solid discussions on exposure and development, lenses, filters and how your negative will play out in the darkroom. We'll have time, too, for portfolio reviews and discussion of general photographic topics.

Landscape photography is ALWAYS at the mercy of the Elements. We might be cold, we might be hot. We might have clear skies (ugh!), we might not! Lone Pine is at about 4000 feet in elevation and can be a bit chilly in late April or it can be perfectly lovely with an average high of about 70 degrees. In Death Valley, only two hours to the east, the April/May high temperatures average at about 90 degrees.

Participants

This workshop is open to anyone interested in furthering their photographic skills.  My personal expertise is with traditional photographic techniques, but much of the basis of seeing and imaging is applicable equally to digital photography.

Enrollment

The workshop fee is $750 and is handled exclusively by The Ansel Adams Gallery.  Click their logo near the top of this page for registration details.

We look forward to seeing you!