Spend 5 days in a variety of locations around the beautiful and rugged San Juan Mountains of Colorado during a photographer’s favorite time of the year - Autumn! 

Based in picturesque Ouray, Colorado, we will visit a variety of great locations in the San Juan mountains for fall foliage, combined with classroom work to better your photographic craft, including time to process and critique your images.  We will shoot sunrises and sunsets as weather allows, with a few hours each day dedicated to classroom instruction and image processing.  Weather permitting, we will take advantage of the dark skies (new moon Oct 2) to shoot at least one night of Milky Way photography. 

Locations will include, but not limited to: scenic highways, forest streams, aspen groves, mountain lakes and epic mountain overlooks. Locations will include areas near Silverton, Ouray, Ridgway & Telluride, Colorado.  

 We will end the workshop on Monday with a group slide show and critique.

Colin D. Young is an award-winning photographer who has spent the past several years exploring the red rock Canyonlands of Southern Utah and the mountains of Colorado.  

He is a certified and insured photography travel guide in Rocky Mountain, Arches,  Bryce Canyon & Canyonlands national parks, and has been leading workshops and tours in Colorado & Utah for several years as the founder of Rock Light Photo Tours.  He has led several fall foliage workshops in Colorado & Upstate New York over the past 10 years. 

- How to make your foliage images pop

- How to capture good images in challenging lighting conditions

- How to analyze a scene for compositional options 

- Working with a range of lenses for a range of compositions

- Using filters to improve artistic results

- How to capture the Milky Way with your digital camera

- Fall foliage photography techniques

- My Adobe Lightroom workflow for getting the most from your images

- How to shoot and stitch together panoramic images

- A positive group critique of images to end the workshop - this is a  wonderful lesson in composition and seeing the world through other photographers' eyes. 

Skill Levels

All skill levels are welcome.  Participants who have a good working knowledge of their cameras, a basic understanding of digital workflow, and some knowledge or exposure to Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop will get the most from this workshop. 

Physical Demands

This workshop will involve 1-3 miles of hiking per day at 7,500'-10,500′ elevations (mostly short hikes).  Participants must be in good physical health.  If you are coming from sea level, plan to arrive a day or two early to acclimatize yourself to the high elevations.  The rental house will be available one day in advance of the workshop. 

Group Size

The workshop will be limited to 8 photographers.

For all of my workshops, I rent a 4-5BR house that will be our home base, giving us a place to gather for classroom sessions, a kitchen to use for meals, and a chance to mingle with and learn from your fellow photographers.  There will be a limited number of rooms available at the  5BR/3.5BA vacation rental property in Ouray, Colorado that will  be the home base for the workshop (less than 1 block from the Ouray Hot Springs). 

King Bedroom with private bathroom - $210/nt +tax dbl occ. (reserved for a couple)

Queen Bedroom (x2), shared bath - $150/night or $175 dbl occ. 

Double Bedroom with shared bath - $130/night 

Registration Fee:  $995 per person 

Deposit to reserve a date: $300 (plus housing deposit as appropriate)

Dates and Times:

Workshop begins Thursday, Oct 3 at 3pm, and ends Monday, Oct 7th at 11am 

Non-photographer/Tag-a-long Rate: $500

For a  spouse/partner/friend who wants to come along, eat meals with the group, and travel to some of our shooting locations.  Note: there is a double occupancy rate for the lodging options at the vacation rental properties. 

Where to meet: 

Participants will gather and be based at our home base vacation rental property in Ouray, Colorado.   Directions and details will be sent well in advance of the workshop. 

Getting to Ouray:

There are airports in Montrose (45 min), Telluride (1 hour), or Grand Junction (2 hours).  For transportation to/from Ouray, plan on renting a vehicle.  There are some rough roads in the area, so an SUV with 4WD/AWD and high clearance is a good idea if you plan to explore the area before or after the workshop.  We will carpool to locations if you don’t have access to a vehicle described above.

 What to bring: 

• A digital or film camera capable of manual exposure settings.  Due to the short time frame of the workshop, people with digital cameras, especially digital SLR or mirrorless cameras, will get the most from the workshop.  
• Plan to bring all of your lenses, from wide angle to telephoto, as the variety of locations will put all your gear to work!
• A sturdy tripod is essential for capturing the long exposures necessary to capture waterfalls & streams, as well as at sunrise/set.
• All your filters. A circular polarizer filter, while not required, can be a useful tool for controlling glare and reflections  on leaves and water.  A graduated neutral density filter can be      useful at sunrise or sunset.
• Hiking boots or other sturdy shoes
• Rain gear and warm layers – Colorado mountain weather can be finicky, and temps can be chilly at sunrise or sunset, especially at higher altitudes.
• A headlamp or flashlight, in case we need to hike back after sunset.
• Your own method of transportation to get around town.  We will carpool to locations as possible. 
• A laptop computer loaded with Adobe Lightroom Classic and/or Photoshop, to best take advantage of the Lightroom workflow sessions, or whatever software you use to process images.