ring of fire
astrophotography and annular eclipse workshop
hanksville, utah
October 9th to 15th, 2023
Join Bray Falls, Derek Culver, and Ian Lauer as we guide you to plan, view, and capture the spectacular Solar Eclipse in the remote backcountry of Southern Utah, this October 14th! This workshop will be a week long of unique astro + photography adventures based out of Hanksville, Utah. We will be guiding you out, often on remote backcountry 4x4 roads, to find remarkably colorful badlands, towering sandstone chapels, and expansive desert cliffs, and show you how capture and edit high quality photos of them and the universe above. View the itinerary below to get an idea of the insanely beautiful locations we will be exploring together, as well as camping at for several immersive backcountry night photography experiences (we also have private cabins for everyone in Hanksville.)
The main focus of this workshop is to capture the Solar Eclipse! And the whole week will be an experience showing you the immense beauty in Southern Utah and how to capture the night sky, with an emphasis on deep space photography and the Eclipse. We have ample time before the Eclipse to get every one calibrated and locked in for the big moment! It will be about 2.5 hours but the best shots will be taken in the span of 3 minutes during totality! We have a brilliant location to shoot the Eclipse at, where we will help you get shots through telescopes as well as landscape shots, but we will not be sharing it with anyone until they are signed up for the workshop. (hint: it’s epic!)
overview
6 nights of photography and astrophotography lessons, guided backcountry astrophotography adventures, multiple group and one-on-one shooting and post processing lessons, hotel and backcountry camping accommodations, most meals provided, and recorded editing tutorials to take home with you. See itinerary below for shooting and camping locations.
Date
Monday October 9th - Sunday October 15th, 2023
Difficulty & lessons
This astrophotography workshop is great for both beginner and advanced astrophotographers, and requires some mild traversing on uneven terrain with your camera gear. We will cover both photography and astrophotography basics like planning, choosing compositions, how cameras work, single night exposures, time lapses, and build upon shooting and editing fundamentals as we get into tracking, stacking, deep space, solar photography, and combining multiple exposures. In the field lessons will be balanced with several group and 1on1 editing lessons using Lightroom, Photoshop, and Pixinsight almost every day. With three instructors and a small group we are able to tailor our lessons to each individual, beginner or advanced.
Lodging & Food
Accommodations include private cabins in Hanksville and Capital Reef and backcountry camping accommodations and a private chef out under the stars! We provide all the backcountry accommodations, meals, and most transportation and do group meals at restaurants while we are in town. We alternate between nice hotel/house/cabin accommodations and backcountry camping to stay comfortable while also being immersed in nature and taking advantage of the dark skies out in Utah! There are decent grocery stories for basics in hanksville.
logistics
Transportation is not provided to Hanksville, sometimes we can arrange carpools between guests. A discount is given to those who have their own 4x4. We will caravan and arrange carpooling to and from our shooting locations when the workshop starts and provide all 4x4 transportation.
workshop cost
The tuition for this workshop is $5,200. A non-refundable deposit of $1,000 is required to reserve your spot with the remaining balance due a month before the workshop on September 9th. If you need more time please email me. Repeat workshop friends, veterans, and public servants are eligible for discounts.
Join us!
This workshop is limited to 10 participants. You are welcome to bring a friend or family member along on the workshop as a guest! Your guest is allowed to use the lodging and join on hiking and night photography excursions, but may only participate in the shooting lessons with a camera if they purchase a participant spot- If so, contact us your guest is eligible for a discount! Repeat clients, veterans, and public servants are eligible for a discount as well.
itinerary
October 9th
Meet: at Duke’s Slickrock Grill in downtown Hanksville at 4:00pm for a group introduction, orientation, and dinner!
Shoot: Badlands just 30 minutes outside of Hanksville, we will shoot sunset, and astro until every one gets tired. Bray and I will camp out with all the deep space rigs so that every one can leave their set ups and tracked out to collect data throughout the night, we will corral them for every one in the morning.
Stay: Cabin’s at Duke’s RV Park in Hanksville
October 10th
10am Editing Class and Lunch at Duke’s Slickrock Grill
After resting up, we will convene for lunch and group post processing lessons from Derek and Bray! We will do a group editing then branch of into 1on1 editing sessions with. We will shoot tonight at Capital Reef, stopping to visit beautiful bentonite hills on our way to set up our deep space (even a DSLR with a tracker is considered deep space and can produce amazing results!) right outside of our hotel in Capital Reef.
Shoot: Badlands just outside of Hanksville! These rainbow hills are super cool, I’ve never shot astro here but it lines up in every direction with Orion, the upper Milky Way, and Cygnus is some awesome compositions.
October 11th
Meet: at Duke’s Slickrock Grill in downtown Hanksville at 4:00pm for a group introduction, orientation, and dinner!
Shoot: Capital Reef! We will be camping out in the Backcountry of Capital Reef but will have access to toilets and running water. We will focus on landscape astrophotography a bit more this night but also camping will allow us to take advantage of the long dark nights for deep space.
October 12th
Stay: Cabins at Duke’s RV park in Hanksville
Shoot: Factory Butte and Goblin Valley
We will get another editing session in and later explore Factory Butte and Goblin Valley again, which make for some zany and unique foregrounds. One of our workshop leaders will be camping out at our locations every night so after shooting landscape photography, you are welcome to leave out your deep space astrophotography set up to be safely babysat and collect data.
October 13th
Stay: back to the Cabins at Duke’s RV park in Hanksville
Shoot: Goblin Valley State Park
We will head back to Hanksville to our cabins and clean and rest up! We will have an editing session of our eclipse photos lead by Bray and his innovative and proprietary Pixinsight methods than I believe only 3 or 4 scientists know how to properly do in the world… pretty awesome! We will head back out later to the otherworldly, Goblin Valley!
October 14th - ECLIPSE!!!!
We will scout out our composition the day before while in Capital Reef. We have several ideas but don’t want to give away them until it’s time! We will be heading into the backcountry of Capital Reef to camp out and shoot the eclipse. If we have a cloudy forecast, we have the flexibility to drive up to 6 or so hours along the eclipse totality line with several other locations already pre scouted in either direction- we’re committed to shooting it!! Camping this night gives us the flexibility to make sure we do it right.
Shoot: Eclipse, then astro later that night too. We will process our images right out there in the field.
Stay: Back country glamping
October 15th
We finish in the AM! We will have a group breakfast before saying our farewells with more editing. We do lots of editing in the field but also follow up with tutorial videos as well as a group zoom editing session together- it’s much easier to remember all the editing techniques while you’re well rested! We also record the editing session for you.
