Death Valley Backcountry Photography Workshop

March 28 - April 2, 2025

Spring wildflowers, “sailing stones”, massive sand dunes, Milky Way, in some of Death Valley National Park’s most dramatic landscapes. Road conditions permitting, we’ll show you The Racetrack and the tallest dunes on the West Coast (nearly 700 feet high), when we can also capture the Milky Way galactic center and Milky Way arch panoramas.

While researching Jeff’s 320-page guidebook “Photographing California”, we wanted to cover Death Valley thoroughly. We explored a number of remote roads, valleys and ridges, and found some unique and compelling sites that few get to see. Now we can show them to you!

Death Valley is a truly massive park, and these locations are far from the main Death Valley, and Milky Way shooting is around 3am-5am this time of year. So we’ll stay far from the Park’s lodging and restaurants. So this is an expedition-style trip. We’ll be camping (rental equipment available) and we’ll all need 4WD or AWD high clearance vehicles, All Terrain rated tires. No 4WD vehicle? No problem! SUV or Jeep rentals are available.

No experience necessary. This isn’t as hardcore as it may sound, though this type of travel may be unfamiliar. We had one woman from Indiana who joined us on this itinerary as her first trip with us. She had never camped before. She had never driven a Jeep or on unpaved roads before. She had a blast! She rented a Jeep, camping gear at REI in Las Vegas, bought some food and put it in cooler. She slept on an inflatable sleeping pad in her Jeep. She went on our more “normal” Death Valley itinerary the following spring, and has joined us in Yosemite at least three times (even repeating some itineraries).

We keep this group very small, about 4-5 participants. Lori and I bring our camper and often make more food than we need, so meals often end up being at least semi potluck. It’s very relaxing and peaceful hanging out in nature in our camp chairs in the evenings after sunset, not having to be anywhere until optional night photography in the morning.

We had one client come with a Toyota Forerunner with rooftop tent. Another had a Toyota Tacoma with a pop-up Four Wheel Camper. 4WD campervans are ideal. Lori and I have taken several different full sized SUVs out to these places and slept in the back. Many of our clients sleep in a tent. There are lots of ways to make it work. Contact us if you have questions.

What’s included:

Guiding based on many years of Death Valley exploration
Photography instruction if desired
Advice if your camping experience is minimal
Assistance dealing with flat tires if needed (we’ve dealt with many)

What’s not included:

Lodging not needed (saving $1500+), we’ll be camping!
Transportation (AWD/4WD advised, rentals available)
Meals/snacks/beverages
Entrance fee to the park

Itinerary

This is what we consider to be our “adventure series” workshops. Part of the adventure is that backcountry roads can become washed out and impassable, or in the case of the higher approaches, snowed in, and closed. So we’ll monitor road conditions and reports, and we’ll watch the weather before the trip. A little flexibility is key.

We sometimes start in Shoshone about 90 minutes out of Las Vegas, enter the Park from the south and work our way north, ending up in Big Pine in California’s Eastern Sierra. If either the roads in the south or north are too rough, we have options, and we may end up in the center of the Park up a literal canyon and end at Furnace Creek or Stovepipe Wells in the center of the Park. We’ll set our desired itinerary up front based on the group’s shooting preferences, reconfirm it about 4 weeks before the trip, and still watch to see if we need to fine tune anything close to the meeting date.

So flexibility is key. We’ll bring rescue boards for mud (or ruts with dust) and a tow strap or two, but we’ve never had to use them so far. We never forget that we’re in this for the photography, not hardcore four-wheeling or vehicle rescues.