Mojave
Just a bit outside Las Vegas lies the Mojave Desert, and Mojave National Preserve. Within live old secrets of past desert life, remnants of mining and ranching. Old cars, old shacks, an old train depot and railroad tracks. The landscape is at once barren and full of visual interest. Sand dunes, cinder cones, lava beds, the limestone crags of Clark Mountain and the rugged ridges of the horizon. There's a lot to see, and a lot to photograph, in the Mojave.
Workshop Details
March 17-22, 2022 — Completed
This is a 5-night, 6-day workshop. Your adventure begins on the morning of Thursday, March 17, and ends on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 22.
$2,095 + applicable taxes. Register below.
Skill level
Intermediate and above. 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.
Group size
14, with 2 instructors — 7:1 ratio
NPS website
Workshop Leaders
Registration
This event has passed. Thanks for your interest!
| • Deposit of $600 is required to reserve your spot at the workshop. |
| • Balance of $1,995 is due on December 17, 2021. —> Pay balance here. |
| • You may choose the “Pay in Full” ticket if you desire to pay all at once. |
| • Last day for a cancellation request is December 16, 2021 (see cancellation and refund policy). |
| • The workshop fee does not include lodging, food, airfare, or transportation to Primm or to our nightly shoot locations. |
The Mojave Experience
Mojave National Preserve is a special, though not frequently visited, place. In fact, that it’s not more visited is surely part of what makes it so special.
The preserve sits in California, south of Las Vegas, just over the state line. Located equidistantly between Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks, it contains a little bit of what make both those places so special: beautiful desert landscapes, sand dunes, rock formations and, yes, Joshua trees, to name a few.
Mojave is also a light painter’s dream. It’s an old mining area, and still contains remnant machinery, abandoned houses, sandblasted cars and trucks and vans decaying in the heat.
There’s also Kelso Depot in the center. The hundred-year-old railroad stop now serves as a visitor center, complete with a restored old restaurant inside. It’s a gorgeous building begging to be photographed at night, surrounded by other structures doing the same, especially the old post office across the street.
We’ll photograph all of this and more as we explore Mojave National Preserve in daylight and moonlight and under the stars.
Learn Instagram with Jess Santos
Not only will we experience all of the above, but we’ll also be fortunate to be joined by local photographer and master of the blue-hour blend, Jess Santos. Jess is amazing. She spoke at our very first Night Photo Summit, and we consider her a valued colleague who’s a blast to spend time with in the field.
She lives not far away, so Mojave is part of her photography backyard. She knows the place well, and we’ll be fortunate to have her along for at least part of the ride, both in the classroom and in the preserve.
Jess is also an expert at Instagram, and she’ll be sharing her knowledge with the group! She’ll talk to participants about how to build an Instagram following by strategizing not just hashtags and timing, but also by curating photos.
At the end of this workshop, you’ll go home not only with an amazing array of dark-sky and moonlight photos from this amazing desert, but also with the knowledge to maximize your presence on today’s leading photo-sharing platform.
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 won’t be teaching the basics of night photography on this workshop, as our goal will be more about light painting the many potential subjects in this beautiful and at-times quirky environment, as well as working with some more involved night photography techniques (see below). And, of course, there’s that whole Instagram thing!
TOPICS COVERED WILL INCLUDE:
light painting with flashlights and Low-level Landscape Lighting with LED panels
using PhotoPills to plan a moon shot
blue-hour blends
working in moonlight
night panos
and more …
This workshop will have both field and classroom instruction. At night, participants can stay out shooting as long as they, or their camera batteries, hold out. While in the field, the instructors will demonstrate their own techniques and will work with participants one-on-one 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. Each participant will have the opportunity to work one-on-one with Chris and Matt in the field.
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
Travel
You will need a car. There is no need for four-wheel-drive, but something with clearance higher than a sedan is a good idea, as we will be driving some dirt roads. (If you bring a sedan, you may be able to ride with someone else on the couple of nights when a higher-clearance vehicle is prudent.) If you are interested in carpooling or sharing a rental car, let us know and we will try to connect you with another attendee looking for the same.
You are responsible for arranging and paying for your own transportation.
Las Vegas is so close that you’ll almost certainly want to fly into there, unless you have a specific reason not to.
Nearby Airports:
Las Vegas (LAS) — less than 1 hour from Primm
Ontario (ONT) — 3 hours
Lodging & Food
We will be staying in Primm, Nevada. Lodging information will be communicated via email as soon as the hotel is ready to begin taking reservations.
We encourage eating two meals per day—a good late breakfast and a great late lunch. Restaurant options are limited in all our locations, but they do exist. When on the night shoots, you may wish to bring snack food or a sandwich and plenty of water.
You are responsible for arranging and paying for your own meals and accommodations.
Weather
It’ll be early spring in the desert! Expect highs in the 60s F, lows in the 40s.
Recommended Attire
Either trail pants or jeans, short- and long-sleeve shirts, a sweater or sweatshirt, and a light- and medium-weight jacket. In other words, layers. The desert can be warm during the day and cold at night. A base layer wouldn’t be a waste of packing space. And definitely wear comfortable trail shoes.
Exertion Level
The exertion level of this workshop is Easy to Moderate. (See more about our classifications.)
Most of our shoot locations will be close to the car, as well as relatively easy to access and move around. But exceptions exist, in particular Kelso Dunes, where we not only have to walk over sand to get to them, but we have to walk over a lot of sand to move over and around them.
Aside from that, no vigorous activity will be required during the workshop, but please consider your physical abilities prior to registering. You should be comfortable carrying your own equipment over uneven ground in the dark.
Considerations
Please read our FAQs section for more information about skill and gear requirements, and other information that pertains to all our workshops.
If you have questions, please contact us—we're happy to talk it over with you.
Following a Call ...
“Sometimes a new place doesn’t live up to our self-generated hype; Mojave, on the contrary, surpassed it.”
The Mojave had been calling me for a while.
It’s a place I just wanted to go. First, it’s got a great name. Right? Second, it’s not far from Las Vegas, where I regularly fly into to access national parks such as Death Valley and Zion, and other inspiring night photography spots such as Valley of Fire and Nelson ghost town. Nearby Mojave surely had to have something to offer too. Right?
There’s certainly a lot to work with as a photographer within a two-hour circle of Vegas. Yet all the times I traveled through, Mojave always sat there, just a little out of reach of my itinerary.
Then finally, almost two years ago, I made the commitment to get there. I was scheduled to finish a workshop in Death Valley, and I had a few spare days I could stretch my trip into. So I did, and I rented a Jeep, and I charted a course for Mojave National Preserve.
Over the course of two days and two nights I explored in person what previously had lived only in my imagination. Sometimes a new place doesn’t live up to our self-generated hype; Mojave, on the contrary, surpassed it.
Jeeping around the desert was like winding through a night photographer’s fantasy world. I couldn’t drive or walk far without seeing something I wanted to photograph, either in the soft, warm light of sunset, or under the cool glow of the moon, or beneath a dark sky of glittering stars. Everything from the soft lines of sand dunes, to the hard lines of jagged mountain ridges, to the quirky desert elements of abandoned shacks, rusty cars and a restored train depot—all of it called.
Now I’m in love with the Mojave, because I finally followed its call.
