Overlanding Adventure: Mojave Desert Light Painting (03/13/24 - 03/17/24)
Light up the night with Jess Santos & Ryan Oswald, March 13th to 17th, 2024 on this Night Photography Workshop. Get creative with light painting under moonlit puzzles of granite boulders and groves of twisting joshua trees. The Mojave Desert has a rich history steeped in gold rush ghost towns and these relics of the wild west are the perfect place to tell a story with light and imagination.
This workshop was meticulously designed to expand on the traditional night photography techniques of light painting, star trails, moonscapes, twilight scenes and of course the Milky Way. These dates were specifically chosen to teach you our tips and tricks in combining enchanted moonscapes and the stars, thus creating powerful night images. You will also learn how to use moonlight to your advantage to capture dazzling night sky imagery that tells a story.
Watch your head! This workshop features not one, but two underground locations. We kick off the workshop with an entirely different experience. Our first location is a private photography tour of
Mitchell Caverns in the foothills of the Mojave Desert.
WHY IS THIS SO SPECIAL?
We are the first and only photography company to currently offer this experience. You the adventurer get to travel into a completely different world and really put your creative light painting skills to the test.
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This workshop is a little different...
Every attendee will have their own self-contained room on wheels! We are securing overland rigs (or similar) for this adventure. Because of the remote nature of this location, having the freedom to base camp near our locations allows us more photography time. If you want to take this workshop, but do not want to camp please reach out to us!
Together we will take you on a backcountry journey that will leave you with wild photographs and wild experiences. Many of the photography locations in this workshop are hidden amongst a vast system of backcountry trails in the Mojave Desert and there is no better way to explore them than outfitted with your very own overlanding rig.
Pack your camera, your sleeping bag and your favorite pillow... leave the rest up to us! Even the cooking, breakfast and dinner are provided on this workshop in true camping style.
(Please see adventure inclusions below for more info and/or send us a message)
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We will be including a Post Workshop Group Zoom Editing Session to cover putting it all together in the digital darkroom, this will be screen recorded for you to be able to finish your images at your leisure.
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⛰ All experience levels are welcome.
We are limiting this photography workshop 10 students with 2 Instructors based on vehicle availability, to ensure that everyone receives our attention and to keep compositional possibilities uncluttered.
This workshop is astrophotography based so we have kept the itinerary flexible to be able to pursue the best available clear skies at night and the best light available during the day. If it rains or conditions prove unsafe to venture out we will work on post processing, image critiques and in classroom sessions, there's always so much to learn both in field and in the classroom!
This workshop will require minimal hiking (no more than 3 miles) through rocky or sandy terrain.
Planning your shoots
- Scouting and evaluating conditions
- Composing an image to grab the viewer’s attention
- Composing an image with a person in frame to show scale and tell a story
- How to work with light and how to find the best light for the scene
- Utilizing apps, such as PhotoPills, for more efficient planning
- Choosing the right lens, find your focal length
- How and when to use filters
- How to shoot with a plan or vision for editing
Capturing your image
- Creative light painting techniques to bring your vision to life
- How to use and capture moonlight in your night scenes
- Histogram: How to read for perfectly exposed images
- Exposure control: How to use ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed in different scenarios
- Creative ways to use lens distortion
- Focus stacking & Focal Length Blends
- Bracketing and exposure blending
- Focusing at night to capture pin sharp stars and foreground
- Blue Hour Blending: How to capture blue hour & Milky Way
- Stacking for Noise Reduction: how to shoot the proper frames to stack
Bringing the image to life
- Lightroom and Photoshop: Learn our post-processing workflow
- How to blend multiple images together in Photoshop (Blue Hour Blends, Focal Length Blends, Exposure Blends, Composites)
- Luminosity Masks
- Dodging and Burning
- Blue-hour Blends
- Star-stacking: how to edit starry night skies with Starry Landscape Stacker (or Sequator)
- Understanding layers and masks
- Finishing touches using clone stamp and removing distractions
- Creating Orton glows and painting with light
- Sharpening: Creating sharpness in your final image
