Bodie Night, Interior Access, and Eastern Sierra Photography Workshop
July 7-11, 2024
Every once in a while we offer both Bodie sunrise/interior access session and a Bodie night photography session in one workshop. This new July itinerary will start in Lee Vining, spending two days/nights capturting landscapes and practicing our night photography techniques optimized for adequate light, enhanced shadow detail, and low noise. For the third night we’ll move toward Bodie to be close for our morning building interior access at 6am the next morning.
For our morning in Bodie we’ll have three hours before the park opens to visitors, and we’ll continue to have exclusive interior access until noon.
July can offer scattered rain showers during the afternoon, a colorful sunset and potentially rainbows as the storms clears, followed by clear skies for milky way photography under a dark night sky. We’ll spend the first two nights practicing night photography at the iconic Mono Lake South Tufa site and up in the Yosemite’s Tioga Pass area. Weather and photographic opportunities will influence our daily itineraries. For the last day we’ll have one post processing session before we head to Bodie and have the park to ourselves from 6 pm to 1 am. Bodie provides a plethora of subjects perfectly situated for Milky Way compositions as well as star trails for those interested. The daylight hours for the first two days will offer landscape photography. You will have two trip leaders, each with 60+ nights experience shooting and leading groups in Bodie, plus over 15 interior access sessions. We prefer our workshops to have no more than 8 participants for a 4:1 student to instructor ratio, to give you maximum attention and more time inside Bodie’s buildings.
A portion of the proceeds of your fee goes to the Bodie Foundation to assist in their “arrested decay” program in preserving the park. Please note that Bodie is at an elevation of 8374 feet. Consult your doctor if you have any concerns.
Here are links to sample photos from Bodie interior access, and Bodie and vicinity workshops in July. See a sample itinerary below (we constantly adjust our plans to take advantage of the best weather and light).
Itinerary
To ensure you get the best pictures and to accommodate for any adverse weather, we keep the exact itinerary flexible. The following is an example of what to expect, though it may change slightly as necessary during the workshop.
- Day 1 – we’ll meet for dinner shortly after everyone has checked into their hotel. From there we’ll head to either Mono Lake or Yosemite’s High Sierra for sunset and night photography, anticipating returning to our hotel rooms around midnight.
- Day 2 — 5:20am sunrises will be optional while we shoft our waking hours into night. We’ll meet in late morning for an early lunch, possibly grab a picnic dinner and head up into the High Sierra in search of amazing compositions. Afternoon weather can be dramatic and we’ll shoot through sunset into a second night of Milky Way photography.
- Day 3 – We’ll start in late monring with a post-processing session before considering destinations for weather, landscape, sunset and night photography. We’ll move our lodging closer to Bodie for our 6am morning session the next day and the night session on the last night.
- Day 4 – We’ll srive up Bodie Road around 5:30am to arrive at our 6am interior access session in Bodie on time. We’ll shoot inside Bodei’s buildings until noon. We’ll have the Park to oursevlves until it opens as 9am. We’ll return to our hotel, rest up and meet around 3:30 for an early dinner. We’ll wrap up dinner to arrive at the Bodie gate by 6pm, where we’ll meet our monitor for the night. He/she will give us a review of the park and its rules. We will have full access to the park during closed hours until we need to be out of the park at 1 am.
- Day 5 – Sleep in, late check out, head toward home.
What’s included:
- Guiding by two local experts who know the sites & weather (we live here)
- Photography instruction: subject, composition, exposure settings
- Post-processing instruction: day, night, fall, special effects
- 6am-noon access to Bodie State Historic Park
- 6pm-1am guided /illuminated dark sky night photography in Bodie
What’s not included:
- Lodging (Standard cancellation terms, not tied to workshop terms; lodging recommendations will be provided upon registration)
- Group transportation (minimize illness risk)
- Meals/snacks/beverages – We’ll use outdoor seating & take-out
