May 2-7, 2017

[dt_button link=”https://nppemaster.wpengine.com/photography-workshops/utah/#crsummer” target_blank=”true” button_alignment=”default” animation=”fadeIn” size=”large” style=”default” bg_color_style=”accent” bg_hover_color_style=”accent” text_color_style=”default” text_hover_color_style=”default”]CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE[/dt_button]

Capitol Reef National Park is Utah’s secret gem and one of our favorite National Parks. This is a spring Master Class workshop, and we will be working with great weather, and abundant wildflower blooms will color the landscape in every direction. Thus we have added a special education module for wildflower capture and the integration of wildflowers into landscape narration.

Named for what it looks like (white rock domes like the U.S. Capitol, rocky ridges like marine reefs), Capitol Reef National Park is a 100-mile pinch in the earth’s crust in the geographical middle of nowhere, but it’s overloaded with geological, cultural, and sensory consequence. There’s the Waterpocket Fold, a jagged scar formed from the monocline — the seam left over when shifting plates lifted one side of a fault 7,000 feet. Explore miles of white horizontal rock layers filled with alternating bands of white Navajo Sandstone, red Wingate, shale, and pinkish Entrada Sandstone.

Capitol Reef is unique on many photographic levels with civilization ruins, ancient and recent, abound with Fremont Indian rock shelters as well as Mormon settlers’ cabins. Pictographs and grinding stones in the cliffs, apple orchards, and a one-room schoolhouse in Fruita demonstrate how earlier Utahans lived. Point your lens at narrow rivers, Gooseneck trails, and let your breath slip away as you explore Chimney Rock, Hickman Bridge, and Broken Towers. There is no light pollution, and we will work the blue hour while capturing the Temple of the Moon and Sun, iconic sandstone structures that few photographers see in the real because they are difficult to reach but not too worry— we will get you there in our off-road vehicles.