Grand Staircase - Escalante
Overview
The ultimate southwestern landscape photography experience: a perfect combination of mind-blowing landscape, autumn color, masterful instruction, wonderful dining, and excellent accommodations.
Join Frans Lanting and Justin Black for this opportunity to develop and refine your creative vision and skills of composition in the majestic Grand Staircase descending toward the Grand Canyon and the canyons of the Escalante – truly a landscape photographer’s dream come true. Boulder Mountain rises to the west of Capital Reef National Park in the picturesque Aquarius Plateau of South Central Utah. It is the highest timbered plateau in North America, with over 50,000 acres of rolling forests of aspen, pine, spruce, and fir, as well as expansive meadows. The area features the dramatic red rock canyons and sculpted formations for which southern Utah is famous, but it is a little known and refreshing alternative to more heavily trafficked southwestern locations.
The author and desert wilderness advocate Edward Abbey once astutely observed of this area:
There are more hills, holes, humps and hollows, reefs, folds, domes, swells and grabens, buttes, benches and mesas, synclines, monoclines, and anticlines than you can ever hope to see and explore in a lifetime.
We’ll add that the quality of light and atmosphere here are superb.
Based out of the beautiful Boulder Mountain Lodge, and with first-class dining at the famous Hell’s Backbone Grill, this is a superb landscape photography workshop scenario, which helps explain why Visionary Wild clients often repeat this experience. We hope you’ll join us!
Note: Visionary Wild, LLC operates this workshop under a Commercial Use Permit issued by the Bureau of Land Management at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Itinerary
The workshop will start with an orientation and introductory session at 1pm. The first photo excursion will take place that afternoon. Each morning and evening, we’ll be out to photograph first light before breakfast and out for evening light before dinner. During midday hours, Frans Lanting and Justin Black will make presentations on photographic vision, composition and creativity, digital workflow, and maximizing image potential. They will also lead two constructive critique sessions, often considered the most instructive part of the workshop. The morning of the 24th will be the final field session, followed by critique until we adjourn at 3:00pm.
Instructors
Frans Lanting
- FRANS LANTING has been hailed as one of the great nature photographers of our time. His influential work appears in books, magazines, and exhibitions around the world. Born in ...
Justin Black
- JUSTIN BLACK is a photographer (www.justinblackphoto.com), writer, editor, expedition leader, photo workshops instructor, a Fellow ...
Gallery
Pricing
Standard
Superior
Deluxe
All costs are per person.
ROOM TYPES
Standard. One queen bed.
Superior. One king or two queen beds.
Deluxe. Luxury Suite with two queen beds, separate living room, large master bathroom and separate powder room, full kitchen.
PAYMENT SCHEDULE
- 50% deposit due to confirm registration
- 50% final payment due June 22, 2023
Click here to review our terms and conditions.
INCLUSIONS
Package includes lodging for four nights (checking in on Oct 20 and checking out on Oct 24) and all meals from dinner on October 20 through lunch on October 24 (including wine and beer with dinner).
Highlights
- Photograph our favorite locations discovered on numerous prior visits, in this quintessentially southwestern landscape
- Limited to ten participants
- Eight field photography sessions, morning and evening
- Refine your personal vision and composition
- Using various qualities of light to best effect
- Exposure and tonal control
- Focus-stacking and stitching techniques
- Essentials of digital workflow
- Optimizing images in post-processing
- Constructive group critique sessions
- Southwestern gourmet dining at the award-winning Hell’s Backbone Grill
- Excellent accommodations at Boulder Mountain Lodge
Accommodations
Boulder Mountain Lodge is an oasis of calm, comfort and luxury in the middle of Utah’s scenic red rock canyon country and mountain forests. It is perfectly located for quick access to the unparalleled natural wonders of the Boulder-Escalante region, and as if that weren’t enough, it features a superb restaurant on its premises – Hell’s Backbone Grill.
Travel
