Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park is home to the tallest sand dunes in North America, and rising above them are the spectacular 14,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, at the foothills of the Rockies. These elements converge to create one of the state’s best dark-sky locations.
We begin each morning in the classroom, where Glenn, a contributing editor at Outdoor Photographer, covers essential information for both day and night photography, such as how to shoot in high-contrast light and how to use apps, including Sun Surveyor and The Photographer’s Ephemeris. Glenn also shares best practices for planning, photographing, and processing both single-frame and panoramic images of the Milky Way. Afternoons are spent in the field photographing the dunes illuminated by the San Luis Valley’s sunset light, and our sessions continue after dark, when we capture the seemingly infinite array of stars soaring over this surreal landscape.
After three days in the Great Sand Dunes National Park, we drive three hours to Santa Fe and spend our final two days editing and printing our best photographs in The Workshops state-of-the-art digital lab. Throughout, Glenn provides continual feedback on participants’ work. Join him for a thorough introduction to creating stunning daytime and nighttime images in one of the West’s most beautiful national parks.
Working knowledge of digital workflow and manual mode on your digital SLR or mirrorless camera. Participants must be able to download, select, and transfer images to their own jump drive for class each day.
Glenn Randall has been a full-time photographer, writer, and instructor for 43 years. He is a contributing editor for Outdoor Photographer magazine and in the course of his career over 2,000 of his photographs have been published, including 88 covers. He has also sold over 10,000 prints.
Three books of his landscape photographs have been published, Colorado Wild and Beautiful, Rocky Mountain National Park Impressions, and Sunrise from the Summit, which showcases images Glenn captured at sunrise from the summit of all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks. His first textbook, The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography, was published in 2015; the second edition was published in June, 2020. His second textbook, Dusk to Dawn: A Guide to Landscape Photography at Night, was published in spring 2018.
Website: glennrandall.com
