Grand Canyon North Rim

Workshop Details

Our workshop mission is to explore every U.S. national park. As with all our Passport Series locations, it may be years (if ever) before we return to any specific park. If you have a dream of making epic long exposures at night at Grand Canyon’s North Rim, we hope you join us.

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The Grand Canyon North Rim Experience

“The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself.” — John Wesley Powell

Only 10 miles from the South Rim (as the crow flies), the more rugged and remote North Rim is a solid 5-hour trip (as the car drives).

It is an incredibly different experience at the North Rim. Not only is it 1,000 feet higher in elevation than the South Rim (meaning slightly cooler temperatures and deeper views into the gorge), but also has fewer crowds, as only 12 percent of the Grand Canyon’s visitors make their way to the North Rim.

Plus, most of the views from the North Rim face south—which means they face the Milky Way. As such, this workshop will focus on photographing the Milky Way with gentle moonlight filling the canyon. Our focus will be to make sure you can capture the deep and colorful geological textures and blend them perfectly with star-point and star-trail night skies.

The Grand Canyon is a panoramic paradise. We will be setting up for those famous sunsets as well as mastering epic night panos. If creating panoramas is something that you have always wanted to learn, then this is the workshop for you.

There are also plenty of light painting opportunities, especially along the trails, to bring more detail to the ancient rocks and trees clinging to the cliffs.

We scheduled this workshop during the waxing crescent moon, which will set at 11 p.m. the first night. It will set about 30 minutes later each night and provide us longer opportunities to capture the depths of this truly Grand Canyon.

There is no official meeting room at the Grand Canyon, so instead of our standard class time we will have several informal group sessions and then meet with each participant one-on-one to review your images, give assignments and help you get the most out of your North Rim experience.

WILL WE BE HIKING DOWN INTO THE CANYON?

No. That would take 4 to 6 hours to get down and even more to come back up. (We do plan on exploring the bottom of the Grand Canyon, just not this year.) You will have plenty of time to hike any of the rim trails or to just relax in one of the popular rocking chairs at the lodge and soak it all in.

The Add-on Experience

White Pocket Under the Moon and Milky Way

Note: This is an optional, additional experience to be held immediately after the main workshop ends, intended for registered attendees interested in a camping adventure.

Two hours from the North Rim (remember it takes an hour to get out of the park!) lies the surreal landscape of White Pocket. Located within the multicolored Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, it takes some serious four-wheel-driving along sandy and rough roads to find this hidden pocket. Lonely trees, hoodoos, brain rocks and twisty wave-like formations surround this dreamlike landscape.

We have eight spots available for a one-night add-on experience at White Pocket. The add-on will be fully catered: Dinner and breakfast, transportation (from where we’ll park our cars) and tents will be provided. You don’t need to bring any supplies except your camera gear and your imagination.

We will camp and shoot at the base of the Paria Plateau, where temperatures will be in the high 90s F during the day and 80s at night. We will have the afternoon to scout the Pocket and all night to stay up shooting! The 70 percent moon will be up until 1 a.m. and then the moonscape will flip to a fantastic Milky Way World. We’ll have plenty of time to blend previous moon landscapes with the now darker skies as well as to search for new compositions long into the darkness.

The heart of White Pocket is only a 10-minute walk from our camping spot, so you can also let your camera keep clicking if you need a quick cat nap!

We will depart after breakfast in the morning and will provide transportation back to your vehicles.

Note: This optional add-on is available only to workshop attendees. You will get a link to purchase a ticket after registering for the main workshop.

What You Should Know

This workshop caters to knowledgeable photographers with an intermediate or higher skill set. Participants should have a firm grasp of the basic principles of photography and of their cameras, and have a comfortable understanding of night photography fundamentals.

If you would like to attend this workshop but are unsure whether you have adequate night photography skills, we can offer pre-workshop tutoring to get you ready for your adventure with us. Alternatively or additionally, a few of us have written books that may be productive pre-workshop reads.

What You Will Learn

We hope to push you to step outside your comfort zone—to test the limits of what you and your camera can do. You’ll go home after the workshop with a solid grasp of night photography in dark and twilight environments, and a good foundation in light painting techniques.

TOPICS COVERED WILL INCLUDE:

• scouting and planning your shots with PhotoPills

• composing and focusing in low light

• optimizing exposure for RAW capture and development with Lightroom

• panoramic night capture and processing

• how to photograph and blend twilight foregrounds with dark-sky backgrounds

• light painting

• creating jaw-dropping star point and star-trail shots

• and more …

This workshop will have both field and sit-down instruction. We will be meeting informally as a group as well as holding one-on-one sessions to help you build upon each night’s shoot. Participants can stay out shooting as long as they, or their camera’s batteries, hold out. While in the field, the instructors will demonstrate their own techniques, and will work with participants to make sure everyone gets the most out of the workshop.

Our locations have generous room to explore, so everyone will be able to spread out and not get in one another’s way. We do not tell our attendees what to photograph, and won’t line you up in a row to all shoot the same thing (unless it’s helpful to get some people on track). Instead, we encourage you to use what you have learned to create your own unique images, and to let us guide you through the process should you desire. We do not teach you to do what we do, but rather how to develop your own night vision.

Night Conditions

Logistics & General Info

A quiet and beautiful place ...

I first visited Grand Canyon’s North Rim with Chris Nicholson right before our South Rim workshop in 2019. We actually loaded up on pie and totally bypassed the South and took the 30-minute faster route directly to the “way up North.”

It was a magical night. The moon and Milky Way danced together on the opposite side of the sky. We stayed at one of the rustic log cabins right on the rim and spent most of our time photographing along the Bright Angel Point Trail, all night, right up until dawn made the Milky Way disappear.

Ten miles across the canyon we could see the glow of the South Rim. It was hard to fathom that 10,000 people had stood at that point just hours ago. The North Rim sees only 300-500 people spend the night. That’s a big difference in elbow room. Add in the extra 1,000 feet of elevation, and you can just breathe easier on the North Rim. That night I took the above portrait of me standing in the grand solitude and serenity of it all.

I returned earlier this year with Matt on the opening day of the North Rim. The line was 100 cars deep. Unlike the South, which has at least eight lanes to pass through the gate, there’s only one at the North. You see, the North Rim shuts down in the winter due to heavy snow and their short season for cars to enter is from May to October.

The wait was well worth it.

Matt and I spent days and nights winding along the North Rim scenic drive. We explored each overlook, vista and window to this layered world. At the farther point along the highest edge, I set up my tripod to take it all in. I was not alone. There were probably 15 to 20 people who had ventured to the end of this world to watch the sunset. One group of teenagers was huddled up in blankets. They had just graduated high school and were about to embark on their next journey. Each was doing something different, but they wanted to come together one more time at this place that makes you feel … everything.

We talked about the beauty of night photography and they stayed a little bit to see the first stars come alive. I imparted some wisdom about seizing the day and night and sincerely hope our paths cross again. I also challenged my old fear of heights that night, which I succeeded at better during twilight than in the darkness!

On my last night there with Matt, we revisited that first place I’d shot three years before, Bright Angel Point Trail. It was supposed to be a short and easy night with our cabin just a 5-minute walk from the trail head. But Bright Angel has a way of leading you further and further along her path. We found ourselves ignoring the clock and dancing under the stars for many hours, just like my first time.

The North Rim is a magical and majestic place.