Moab Utah with 319 Photography

Location: Moab, Utah

Dates: August 6-9, 2024

Cost: $3,775.00 per student

Max No. of Students: 10

Host Location: Moab Valley Inn, 711 S Main St., Moab, UT 84532

Cost Includes:

• Five nights lodging at the Moab Valley Inn
• We include the night before the workshop begins as the first night of lodging so everyone can arrive and rest before the workshop begins.
• Meals beginning the first day of the workshop and ending the last day of the workshop
• Transportation during the workshop
• Three Professional Instructors
• In Field Instruction
• Classroom Instruction
• Classroom Materials
• Park Fees
• Time and Talent of Professional Instructors 

Cost DOES NOT Include:

• Travel to and from students home to the Moab Valley Inn in Moab, UT
• Meals outside of those provided
• Alcohol
• Trip Insurance

Students Will Learn:

• How to plan, scout, and prepare for their own astro-landscape shoots
• How to capture the night sky using best known techniques and practices
• How to capture foreground landscapes using best known techniques and practices
• How to stack night sky images for noise reduction
• How to post process night sky images
• How to post process foreground landscape images
• How to composite and blend foreground and night sky images to create a stunning final image.

Typical Itinerary

Day 1

10:30am - Meet and Greet in Hotel Conference Room

11:00am - Initial Classroom Instruction begins

• Safety, environmental, wildlife, and sustainability concerns
• Planning, Scouting, Preparing
• Camera Operations, Shooting Methods, Shooting for Stacking
• Camera Accessory Operations
• Shooting Etiquette

5:00pm - Depart hotel for foreground shooting and remain in the field for night sky shooting.

Day 2 - 3

11:00am - Classroom instruction begins in Hotel Conference Room

• Post Processing Instruction
• Stacking Images for Noise Reduction
• Post Processing night sky Images
• Post Processing foreground landscape images
• Compositing and blending images

5:00pm - Depart hotel for foreground shooting and remain in the field for night sky shooting.

Day 4 (Final Day)

10:00am - Final Classroom Instruction

• Refinement of Post Processing Techniques
• Preparing images for Print

4:00pm - Workshop wrap up and closing. 

Moab, Utah is often a mecca for many who love the outdoors. From hiking to off-roading, Moab can offer you most of what outdoor adventurers are looking for. It also beckons to photographers. The high desert climate and wind-swept red rock formations and deep, picturesque canyons provide a high allure to photographers. Moab is the gateway city to two national parks: Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park. These two National parks are designated as dark sky parks. Outside the national parks, the night skies and the landscapes are just as stunning. During our Moab workshops, we have never solely focused on the National Parks, although we do include them on the list of places we shoot in. In both Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, artificial lighting is illegal. In fact, many National parks already have or are considering such bans. As such, we do not light any foregrounds during workshops here. Instead, we teach students to capture foregrounds that naturally line up with the Milky Way and to do so in a specific manner that renders the image much more usable in composite. In post we teach the full process of how to composite foreground images shot during the late hours of daytime with night sky images. The composite-only approach works really well and allows us to focus on the foreground and night sky elements separately and yields typically better final images from the students.

Regarding meals, I did not include them on the itinerary above, however we do provide meals, typically from local restaurants, to our students every day beginning the first day of the workshop and ending the last day of the workshop

The hotel we stay at for our Moab workshops, the Moab Valley Inn, is a great hotel that has taken care of us for several years. I have cultivated a deep relationship with the staff there and always look forward to returning each year. Standard tuition includes five nights lodging for this workshop. Check in is August 5, 2024 (the night before the workshop begins) and check out is August 9, 2024 (the workshop will continue until approximately 0400pm on August 9, 2024 so student will check out of their rooms before class unless they decide to stay an extra night).