When and where?

April 22-27th, 2025 in Big Bend National Park, Texas.

overview

Spend 5 nights with Derek Culver, Andrew Imhoff, Tony Maples, and Bray Falls exploring and capturing the geologic wonders and incredibly dark skies of Big Bend National Park! We will be touring you around to the best parts of the park, at the best times, teaching you the photography techniques and philosophies we use to capture its beauty, and creating amazing memories with a group of like-minded photographers! Towering sand dunes, vibrant rocks, expansive desert, and warm desert nights under the cosmos. We’ll be based in a glamping resort 10 minutes from Terlingua under Bortle 1 dark skies for a comfortable yet immersive photography experience. We will be teaching both landscape astrophotography and deep space (widefield, with trackers!) techniques with hands on instruction under the stars and classroom style editing sessions, with custom tutorial videos after the workshop.

Shooting Locations:

Chisos Mountains, Lost Mine View, Balanced Rock, Homestead Ruins, Rio Grande River, Santa Elana Canyon.

What you will learn:

We believe the best way to learn anything is to immerse yourself in it, and we’d like you to come join our world of astrophotography for a week of adventure, learning, and memories! We teach Astronomy basics, how the moon cycles work, how to plan your shots using apps & astronomy fundamentals, how to find compelling compositions, optimal camera settings, focusing your camera at night, light painting, star trackers, editing your night photos, Lightroom & Photoshop, how to capture timelapses (videos of the night sky!) and edit them together, and much more! This workshop is fantastic for all levels of astrophotographers and adventurers as we keep our group sizes smaller than the industry average to allow plenty of hands on and one on one instruction.

Itinerary

Meet we meet at our Glamping compound between 12-5pm on Tuesday the 2nd to begin our adventures and lessons, officially starting the workshop with a group dinner at 6pm! We end on the morning of Sunday April 27th!

what will you learn & difficulty

This workshop is great for beginner and experienced night photographers and adventurers. You must be able to hike on uneven surfaces for about 1 mile with some of your camera gear. We will be teaching fundamentals to night photography from planning your shot, focusing, and proper settings all the way to blending images, using star trackers, and stacking images! Our workshops are a fun and relaxed environments with access to multiple experts to help you take your images to the next level.

Lodging

Glamping accommodations all 5 nights near Terlingua! 10 minutes from town, we will be based out of (single occupancy) glamping domes with showers, A/C, wifi, and ammenities as well as Bortle 1 skies from inside your stargazing dome! We will be doing group meals and editing session at the glamping complex to and carpooling out to our astro adventrues and lessons together every night!

Logistics

Everyone is responsible for their own transportation to the workshop and during the workshop. Marfa or Alpine are the best airports to fly into with a 1.5 hour drive, and El Paso being the third best airport with more flights but a longer 4 hour drive. Most of the time we can help arrange carpools between our workshop guests from the airports and in the parks in order to save costs and add to the social atmosphere of the workshop! This workshop we can offer transportation for a fee shuttling from the airport as well as driving during the workshop if your flights are to/from Marfa or Alpine, Texas - Please inquire!

workshop cost & payment terms

The tuition for this workshop is $4,200 total, with a non-refundable deposit of $750 to reserve a spot. The remaining total balance of the workshop is due 2 months before the workshop starts. Alumni discounted cost is $3,000 total, $500 deposit, but with the discount applied when the remaining workshop balance is collected!

ITINERARY

Please email us for the full detailed itinerary or further questions- derek@blazingheavens.com

The workshop officially starts at 6pm on April 22nd and ends at 9am on the morning of April 27th! You can meet us any time after 12pm on the 22nd as we will be posted up at our glamping compound waiting for every one to arrive for our introduction and group dinner!

Tuesday April 22nd

Arrive anytime after 12pm at our glamping compound, please be in Terlingua by 6pm at the latest for our group intro and dinner! After dinner we will scope out our first shooting location, head to bed, then wake back up when the Milky Way is out! We will work out the rust, troubleshoot our camera setups, and dial in on settings and compositions with an easy 1 mile hike at Balanced Rock.

wednesday april 23rd

We will sleep in (sunrise is optional for those with energy) then head to breakfast and our first editing session in Terlingua! You will have most of the day to explore the park until we reconvene for an evening exploration an easy hike in the Chisos Mountains. Tonight, we will focus on getting shots up in the Chisos Mountains with an epic send to this amazing viewpoint with the Milky Way core rising! The hike is moderately difficult so we will have a 2nd option and teacher stay behind to shoot from the base of the Chisos Mountains with no hiking involved.

thursday april 24th

Sleep in, edit photos, eat healthy food, coffee, explore the Santa Elena river canyon, dinner, then astro adventures and lessons!

friday april 25th

After sleeping in from our adventures the night before, we’ll head into Terlingua for breakfast and another editing session! Tonight we will head over to this epic canyon vista as well as another spot of this sneaky arch and cacti garden that could be blooming.

saturday april 26th

Expect clear skies, however if we do get clouded out one night we can use this last night to return to one of the other spots. Otherwise, tonight we hang out and capitalize on the epic Bortle 1 skies right outside of our glamping spot! We’ll do a final dinner together at the glamping compound and shoot more tracked shots, cool shots of our stargazing domes, and enjoy our last night together!

sunday april 27th

The trip officially ends at 8am when we are done shooting the Milky Way, but checkout isn’t until 11am- we’ll make sure every one gets back to the airports on time and grab breakfast on our way out! We follow up the workshop with custom editing videos using the images we captured together.

Keep an eye out for alumni discounts at future workshops as well as our annual alumni star party!