Capture the Magic of Arches National Park with Milky Way Photography
Spend 4 unforgettable nights photographing the Milky Way and the most active meteor shower of the year above some of the most dramatic landscapes in the American Southwest. Arches National Park, home to the largest collection of natural arches in the world, offers a surreal backdrop of towering rock formations and sandstone fins—perfect for astrophotography.
As one of the few certified International Dark Sky Parks, Arches provides ideal conditions for Milky Way photography and meteor viewing, with clear skies and minimal light pollution.
10 Aug 2026 - 14 Aug 2026 | 4:00 pm - 11:00 am
$1445
3453 Westwater Drive, Moab, UT, USA
All Skill Levels
We will visit a wide variety of great locations in Arches National Park, as well as a couple of locations in Moab, Utah outside the park, including Canyonlands National Park. The workshop will include classroom work to better your photographic craft, including time to process and critique your images. We will shoot each evening into late at night as weather allows, with a few hours each day dedicated to classroom instruction and image processing. We will end the workshop with a group slide show and critique.
Field lessons include
- Capturing the Milky Way with your digital camera
- Photographing meteors
- Techniques and gadgets for better Milky Way photography
- Making your red rock sunset images pop
- Determining proper exposure
- Capturing great images in challenging lighting conditions
- Analyzing a scene for compositional options
- Using filters to improve artistic results
Classroom instruction
What to Bring
– A digital SLR or mirrorless camera capable of manual exposure settings. Due to the short time frame of the workshop.
– Plan to bring all of your lenses, from 14mm to 200mm(full frame equiv.), as the variety of daytime locations for sunsets will put all your gear to work! A wide angle lens (somewhere in the 14mm to 35mm range) capable of an aperture of f/2.8 or lower is best for capturing the Milky Way. Consider renting a lens if you don’t own one.
– A sturdy tripod
– A circular polarizer filter, while not required, can be a useful tool for controlling glare and reflections for the sunset shoots. NOTE: Colin is a rep for NiSi Filters, which makes an excellent circular polarizer filter, and he can get you a 15% discount off retail prices. https://nisiopticsusa.com/shop/nisi-circular-filters/round-cpl-circular-polarizer-filter/ti-enhanced-cpl/
– Hiking boots or other sturdy shoes: while the hikes to locations we will visit will be fairly short (typically less than 1-3 miles round trip) a good set of sturdy hiking boots is good for protecting the ankles on rocky trails and slippery rocks.
– Lots of clothing layers – Moab weather can be finicky, and temps can be chilly at night in the desert, and much warmer during the day.
– A headlamp, preferably with a dimmable setting, and/or a red light setting, to participate in optional night photo sessions.
– Your own method of transportation. We will carpool to locations as possible, so not everyone needs to drive every day.
– A laptop computer, ideally loaded with Adobe Lightroom Classic, to best take advantage of the Lightroom workflow instructional session. Cables and devices necessary to download your images from camera to laptop.
Caption
UK
Model
f/8.0
20.0 mm
1/5
1/5
50
