Fine Art Images from the American Southwest

San Luis Valley Photography Tour/Workshop

$250.00$695.00

A personalized, custom one on one photography tour/workshop offered year-round in the San Luis Valley with a focus on expansive vistas, landscape, architecture, nature, and wildlife. You will see some of the most spectacular scenery in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

 

4 hour half day – $250 – per person. (Half day not available for Abiquiu Tour)

8 hour day – $450 – per person. This time frame will include travel to chosen locations and shooting with hands on instruction as needed.

12 hour day – $695 per person. This time frame will include travel to chosen locations, shooting with hands on instruction as needed and staying out later for the moon rise or astrophotography, with time in the middle of the day for image review and processing, during lunch.

Year Round – Call 505-501-4880 to reserve a date that suits you for your own personal photo tour.

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Wild Horses San Luis Valley southern Colorado

Time will be spent on location in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, photographing abandoned homesteads, towns, and thriving farming communities. These are enhanced by views of the Rio Grande and the impressive Sangre de Cristo mountain range of the southern Rocky Mountains. We will seek out bald and golden eagles, a wide variety of hawks, great-horned owls, coyotes, wild horses, and elk. In spring and fall, we will have the opportunity to photograph sandhill cranes and geese on their migratory flyway through the San Luis Valley.

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Sandhill Cranes, over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Colorado

In the winter peace, tranquility and solitude abound as silence settles over the land and nature turns the landscape into its personal artist palette. Wildlife and birds will surprise us in the blink of an eye. Hawks, eagles, and other raptors will be plentiful and playful, beckoning us onward from tree to tree and fence post to fence post, all the while flying low overhead and giving us a display of their colors and markings.

In springtime, these hawks will be nesting and raising their young. With great respect, we will observe them from a distance to afford them their place and well-being, leaving them undisturbed. The Eagles will be on the lookout for any opportunity for prey.

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Spring Photography Tours and Workshops.

 

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Comanche Point at Comanche Creek and the Rio Costilla

In the summer we will venture into the cool high country of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Here, rivers and streams fed by snowmelt, nourish wildlife and create abundance for bears, elk, a variety of birds, and wildflowers. In the valley, hawks and other raptors are now spending time enticing young fledglings to leave the nest with morsels of mice, rabbits, and numerous other rodents. Coyotes will be loping through fields in search of anything that moves. Afternoon thunderstorms leave the air pristine with a great chance of wide, arcing rainbows and stunning sunsets.

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Fall photography tour workshops in the High Country

In fall the golden aspen groves and cottonwoods form a backdrop to the landscape of rivers and streams surrounded by snow-capped peaks. Cowboys rounding up cattle in vast meadows head to the valleys for winter.

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Lenticular clouds, Blanca Massif, Colorado

Topics covered

  • Working on location
  • Compositions in landscape, architecture
  • Lighting
  • Exposure, metering
  • Interpreting histogram
  • Auto settings verses manual
  • Depth of field, aperture
  • Shutter speed
  • Multiple image panoramas
  • Image reviews, constructive critiques
  • If there is any other an topic you want covered we will address it in the field, so bring along your questions and requests.

Equipment to bring

  • Camera, batteries, spare batteries, camera cards, and spare camera cards.
  • Supplies are few and far between once we are on location.
  • Consider bringing the manual for your particular camera model, hardcopy or online version.

Optional Equipment

  • Tripod – Essential for some trips (I have a tripod for those who want to travel lite)
  • Laptop or Tablet – For image review
  • Filters – Polarizer, Neutral Density – Essential for some trips

Additional Notes

  • Bring hats, gloves, sunscreen, hand warmers (spring, fall and winter), sturdy shoes and refillable water bottles.

Pick up points for tours are

  • at your Taos, NM hotel, B&B, VRBO, Airbnb,
  • your local residence or
  • a location in the Taos area that is convenient for you.
  • Meeting points for locations outside of Taos can be arranged when reservations are made.

Tour/Workshops

Waiver Form, Terms & Policies