Scenic & Wildlife Photo Workshop in Rocky Mountain National Park

Last spring, Min surprised me with the gift of registration for the RMOWP scenic and wildlife photography workshop, which is a full week at the end of June. I was skeptical at first, to say the least, because I had only had a “real camera” for a couple months, and I felt I wasn’t ready to take full advantage of instructors. Everyone at a workshop like this surely has had years of experience and much better equipment. I had only two inexpensive lenses and a borrowed tripod. Besides, I was more interested in learning about portrait photography and lighting than landscapes. (“Hasn't every possible landscape picture already been perfected?” I thought. “At least with portraits I’m guaranteed that my subjects are unique.”) I felt that taking a workshop on landscape photography would be a waste of money.

Min slowly convinced me that I was wrong. She told me that she felt the same way when she was getting started with oil painting — that although she was very interested in the subject, she was very intimidated the first time she signed up for a workshop. She didn’t even know what kinds of brushes to bring. Still, it turned out that that had been exactly the right time for her to take that workshop — before she felt ready.

I agreed to go. I read several very good books in preparation. (I highly recommend Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure, from which I learned to use manual mode. John Shaw’s Landscape Photography was highly recommended to me, but I haven’t read it yet.) I also bought some more equipment:

• A used Nikon 12–24mm lens. (It probably would be the newer Nikon 10–24mm lens today.) I love my 12–24 for landscapes. It seemed expensive to me at the time, but its price has gone up significantly since I bought it.
• Hitech ND graduated filters. Nic (the organizer) recommended these, and they worked great for me. They seem to be a good compromise between cheap, not-quite-neutral filters and expensive but perfect ones. I bought a two-stop hard and a three-stop soft and Cokin P holders. The wide-angle holder works great (no vignetting) with my 12–24mm lens. Don’t go overboard with holders — you don’t need to outfit every lens.

Don’t bother buying a polarizer for the trip. Nic pointed out that it doesn’t really help at that altitude. What I wish I had brought:

• warmer gloves. The mountains are cold at sunrise.
• a 70–300mm lens. I felt a bit hampered by the 200mm lens. The longer reach of 300mm is useful for wildlife. Fortunately Jared (one of the instructors) had a very nice collection of Nikon-mount lenses and let me try them on a couple occasions.

Also remember that cell phone reception is spotty up there.

I’m really glad that I went. I got to immerse myself in photography for a week, putting other things out of my mind. It seems that no matter how much I want to take a picture of Seattle at sunrise, for example, I can’t get myself to do it. At the workshop, I was living and working with people who were all interested to photograph these great locations despite the inconvenience of it. The instructors had scouted out all the best locations in advance, so I could concentrate on the art and technique of photography instead of spending half my time scouting. And the daily critique sessions were extremely helpful. I received good advice about how to make my best images better, and I was inspired by the images that others had taken in the same locations. (The other participants were not professional photographers. Some were very good, but you should not feel intimidated by them.)

Here are some of my photographs from the workshop:

Also see the slide show of last year’s workshop.