Sleepy Hollow
Spend three nights photographing in one of the most iconic cemeteries in the world, barely an hour outside of Manhattan in the village of Sleepy Hollow, New York. Expect to be spooked by an abbreviated equestrian with a penchant for drama and overgrown squash. If that sounds like fun, this is the workshop for you.
Workshop Gallery
Workshop Details
November 12-14, 2021 — Completed
This is a 3-night, 3-day workshop. Your adventure begins on the afternoon of Friday, November 12, and ends after the shoot on the night of Sunday, November 14.
$995 + applicable taxes. Register below.
Skill level
Open to all who have an understanding of the basic principles of photography and of their cameras and are not afraid of ghosts. Light painting will be a major component of this workshop.
Group size
14, with 2 instructors — 7:1 ratio
Location website
Workshop Leaders
Registration
This event has passed. Thanks for your interest!
| • Deposit of $500 is required to reserve your spot at the workshop. |
| • Balance of $495 is due on August 14, 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 August 13, 2021 (see cancellation and refund policy). |
| • The workshop fee does not include lodging, food, airfare, transportation to and from the airport, or transportation to shoot locations. |
The Sleepy Hollow Experience
The town of Sleepy Hollow, New York, is best known as the setting for Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow story about Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman. It’s a small, fun, and attractive village right on the Hudson River with lots of great restaurants and a hip foodie scene. We’ll make time to explore the town as well as photograph the monuments in the historic cemetery during this jam-packed weekend.
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is somewhat ironically the final resting place of Washington Irving, and also of some of the great industrialists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—Carnegie, Rockefeller and Chrysler.
The cemetery is divided into old and new sections. We’ll spend one night in each: the 19th century side with its traditional Gothic monuments, iron gates and spooky crypts, and the 20th century side with grandiose memorials to the American aristocracy of the Industrial Age. On the third night, everyone will have some personal time with the cemetery’s most famous resident, and will then spend the remainder of the night revisiting their favorite area(s) from the first two evenings. At 85 acres, you won’t cover it all, even after three nights of photography.
We have timed the workshop to coincide with the waxing first quarter moon. There will be plenty of moonlight combined with sky glow from the greater New York area to provide ambient light for your base exposures to blend with light painting on the monuments. This workshop has fantastic opportunities to improve your light painting skills.
What You Should Know
Participants must have at least basic photo skills, know their cameras well, and be comfortable shooting RAW in manual mode with a DSLR or high-end mirrorless camera.
Night photography experience is not necessary, but even folks with extensive experience shooting at night will find this class challenging, stimulating and inspiring. For more advanced night photographers, we can offer a portfolio review and specific challenges and goals, and will offer guidance in the field if you mainly want to concentrate on creating portfolio images or learning more advanced techniques.
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 moonlit and mixed lighting environments, and a good foundation in light painting techniques. This workshop is more terrestrially oriented than most of our workshops. The stars won’t play a major role in most of your images, and the focus will be mostly on your foreground subjects.
TOPICS COVERED WILL INCLUDE:
how to photograph in a dark suburban environment supplemented by moonlight
how to light paint gravestones and memorials to highlight the carvings and engravings on them
how to balance existing and added light sources for maximum impact
and more …
This workshop will have both field and classroom instruction. We will have some classroom time each day, and photograph each 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. During classroom sessions, there will be presentations by the instructors, but we will focus on developing your images and sharing everyone's work and ideas with each other. Each day we will review the previous night’s work.
The cemetery has plenty of 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 Lance in the field. We’ll break into small groups of two or three people to photograph the headless horseman on the last night so everyone can get a great shot.
We do not tell our attendees what to photograph. 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
Travel
You will probably want a rental car. It’s possible to get to Sleepy Hollow by public transportation and ride-hailing, and to take a taxi or ride-hail between the hotel and the cemetery. We encourage sharing a rental car. If you are interested in this option, 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.
Driving from one of the area’s major airports to Sleepy Hollow should take about an hour, but could be longer if traffic is severe. If you can get a flight to Westchester County Airport, it’s half the distance and half the time. There are fewer flight options, and it’s probably more expensive, but convenient. It’s also possible to take a train from Manhattan.
Nearby Airports:
Westchester County (HPN) — 30 minutes
New York: LaGuardia (LGA) — 45 minutes
New York: John F. Kennedy (JFK) — 1 hour
Newark (EWR) — 1 hour
Food & Lodging
We will be staying at a hotel in the Sleepy Hollow area. You are not required to stay at the official workshop lodging, though doing so does make it easier to meet with the group each day. Lodging info and group code will be sent after registering. If you are interested in sharing accommodations, let us know and we will try to connect you with someone like-minded in the group.
Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow have lots of great restaurants. Since it gets dark early in November, we’ll be able to start shooting earlier than usual. A good strategy is to plan on a good breakfast, and a great late lunch or early supper. You might bring snacks to the shoot, and don’t forget your water bottle.
You are responsible for arranging and paying for your own meals and accommodations.
Weather
Expect daytime highs in the 50s F, and nighttime lows in the 40s or possibly the upper 30s.
Recommended Attire
Dress in layers, and remember that standing around at night while photographing, it can feel much colder than it really is. Bring winter clothes for the night shoots. Bring waterproof shoes for walking in wet grass.
Considerations
We’ll have free reign of the 85 acres of the cemetery, which has a mixture of paved and gravel trails and paths. There are some plots with low iron barriers that are easy to miss and trip over, so prudence and care will be required when walking around in the dark. There is no strenuous activity involved on this workshop. You’ll never be more than a 10- to 12-minute walk from your car.
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.
It was a dark and stormy night ...
“The clouds moved in and covered the moon, the sky grew dark, a cold wind blew in and sent chills down our spines.”
In 2010 I received an email asking if I would be interested in teaching a photography workshop in a graveyard––and somehow, it didn’t go to my spam folder! That’s not the kind of email one gets every day, and I was intrigued. I replied, expecting to hear back from the Munsters, or the Adams Family. Instead, a very nice man named Jim phoned, and we hatched a plan.
The workshop didn’t happen until the following year, but when it did we had a full and successful event. On the night that we thought we might have a good chance of seeing the headless horseman (Jim has an uncanny sense about that sort of thing), he asked his friend Matt to come and set up some lighting just in case the Decapitated One made an appearance. Oddly enough, his friend Matt was none other than (you guessed it) Matt Hill.
The clouds moved in and covered the moon, the sky grew dark, a cold wind blew in and sent chills down our spines, and the hairs on the back of our necks stood up. An instant later, this dude with no head and a pumpkin and riding a white horse appeared out of thin air and said, “I hope somebody remembered to bring beer!”
We handed him a beer, curious to see if he would pour it into the pumpkin, and directed him to a spot that we thought would show off his best side. He and his mostly obedient steed graciously posed for our workshop participants for almost three hours. After that, we all had a few beers in the cemetery (except for the steed, who had some oats), listening to stories of how Ichabod Crane wet his britches whenever the horseman appeared.
And that is the story of how I came to teach photography workshops in a cemetery, and also how I met Matt, who along with Gabe, would invite me to be a part of National Parks at Night some four years later. It seems only fitting that NPAN offers a workshop at Sleepy Hollow, and although I’m doing this one with Chris, I wouldn’t be surprised if both Matt and the headless horseman make an appearance. It’s sure to be a rollicking good time, and I for one can’t wait to get back there.
