The Incomparable Valley
Instructor: Jerry Dodrill
2024 Dates: Oct 29-Nov 2 (sold out)
2025 Dates: Feb 11-15, Apr 1-5, Nov 11-15
Focus: Field
Medium: Digital
Join Jerry Dodrill in this field-based workshop designed to develop your artistic vision amongst the grandeur of Yosemite Valley. Enjoy learning from an excellent local instructor who delights in teaching, while gaining an inside perspective on the Valley's wonders.
Overview
Join Jerry Dodrill for a 5 day photographic workshop that will complement the inspiration of this incomparable valley. Our field workshops, offered in the Spring, Autumn, and Winter, are designed to get your creative juices flowing and help you develop your artistic vision. Jerry is very familiar with the valley and the nuances of light in the different seasons. With expertise and patience, Jerry will guide you towards mastering composition and exposure while experiencing the grandeur of Yosemite Valley.
Students of all levels will benefit from a deep dive into identifying subject matter, distilling the composition to its essential elements, and moving beyond documentation to personal expression. The class combines indoor sessions and full days in the field. The group will spend a significant amount of time evaluating composition and identifying elements that strengthen or weaken a composition. Photographers of all levels will leave with an expanded photographic vision and a lifetime of stories. While practitioners of both digital and film cameras are welcome, the immediate feedback provided by digital is encouraged during the class.
FALL 2024 - October 29 - November 2 - SOLD OUT
WINTER 2025 – February 11 - 15
Winter in Yosemite presents a slower, quieter pace. It also is a time that brings the most precipitation to the park and Sierra Nevada. With short days and cold temps, photographing can present both a challenge and rewarding experience. This workshop is scheduled to have you in Yosemite Valley to capture Winter’s graces of lower-angle, warmer light, along with the snow and ice that can be present. If all the weather and water attributes line up, there could be a chance to photograph the famed Horsetail Fall on the final evening of the workshop.
SPRING 2025 – April 1 - 5
Spring is a magical time in Yosemite. Snow meltwater brings back to life all of Yosemite’s famed waterfalls, the Merced River, and all the flora and fauna that depend on it. This workshop is timed perfectly to photograph Spring’s bounty amongst the backdrop of famed granite features, such as Half Dome and El Capitan. We will work with all this beauty to create fresh, new visions of Yosemite’s majestic features.
FALL 2025 - November 11 - 15
Late October has typically seen the last of the crowds in Yosemite Valley, and the peace of Nature preparing for winter is upon us. This is typically peak color foliage in the valley – maples and oaks are turning on the valley floor, and the dogwoods are turning a dusky pink at higher elevations. Low flows in the river provide opportunities to photograph the water worn stones and sand bars with still water reflections, and low angle light softens the granite cliffs.
Workshop Details
| The Incomparable Valley | |
|---|---|
| INSTRUCTOR | Jerry Dodrill |
| FOCUS | Field/Digital Darkroom |
| MEDIUM | Digital |
| LEVEL | Beginner to Intermediate |
| ATTENDEES | 10 |
| TUITION | $1550 |
We are all inspired by Yosemite and the Natural Scene, but not all of us can translate that experience of profound beauty and realization into a photograph that conveys that feeling. It is a challenge for the most experienced and admired artist. But getting there is the goal.
Ansel Adams always believed that technical ability empowered conceptual acuity. If you don’t know how to use your equipment, you will be hard pressed to produce something lasting.
Today’s cameras and image editing software are tremendous tools that help us capture the world around us. Even with these major advances, the technology only helps us to document what we see. While documentation of a magical moment can be exciting, we seek the ability to be poetic all the time.
So, while we learn how to put our technology to work for us through mastery of our equipment, our emphasis will be on personal vision through critiques, indoor and outdoor sessions.
This is a progressive class, with each concept building upon previous ideas, all which are reinforced during the extended field sessions. The field sessions not only locate the class to optimize the potential for dynamic results, but help the participants to learn how to anticipate changing conditions and make educated decisions for themselves.
With a creative vocabulary at our disposal and the time to experiment with cause and effect, our decisions become intuitive and the camera simply becomes an extension of our minds.
Concepts include:
- Creative ways of seeing and photographing nature’s light
- Quick Arrangement: Tools for photo composition while pursuing the light
- Gathering all the Details: A comprehensive exploration of the Histogram and Blinkies
- Using Live View and hyperfocal distance for obtaining quick, sharp images
- A thorough look at the Develop Module in Lightroom with creative approaches to some landscape photo challenges
- Elegant HDR images: From field set-up to processing in Lightroom, Photoshop, or both!
This five-day workshop is beneficial to photographers of a beginning to advanced intermediate level, developing a solid foundation for beginners and a visual voice for the advanced intermediate artists. The days are full!
Students should come prepared for full days as Jerry packs a lot into his classes. His proven method of instruction combines brief indoor sessions that are designed to help students to refine their photographic vision, with extended, interactive field sessions.
About the Instructor
Jerry Dodrill is an adventurer, naturalist and award-winning photographer who has traveled to remote corners of the Earth in a lifelong quest for wild experiences. An expert mountain climber with degrees in Fine Art and Photography, Jerry is passionate about preservation and was a protégé of legendary Galen Rowell in the late 1990's. Today he resides in the Sonoma Coast village of Bodega, California, focusing on assignment photography, writing, exhibitions, and sharing his vision and expertise with others. Jerry's work has been featured in many ad campaigns, books, and publications. He is a regular contributor to Sonoma Magazine, a writer and senior contributor to California Climber Magazine, and has been published in Sierra, Orion, Vanity Fair, World of Fine Wine, Wine Spectator, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Smithsonian, Outside, Alpinist, Rock & Ice, Climbing, and Mountain. He was fundamental in product development and creation of the exciting backpack company MindShift Gear, serves as Vice President of the Rock Ice & Mountain Club and sits on the board of directors of the B-Rad Foundation.
Jerry’s workshop philosophy has evolved out of the many lessons and experiences gained while working as a teacher, guide and professional photographer over the past twenty five years. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the subjects and environments in which we work and in sharing his “story-forward” approach to image making. Part journalist, artist, conservationist, and adventurer, Jerry teaches his workshops by sharing the processes and techniques used to tell his own visual stories with the camera.
Jerry’s website is www.JerryDodrill.com
Workshop FAQ
Find answers to your questions about our Photography Workshops in our FAQ. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you need additional help. You can reach us by email at photoed@anseladams.com or by phone (650) 692-3495.
Clothing / Dressing for the Elements
Physical Limitations Statement
This workshop may involve some walking and hiking around uneven, hilly, and rocky locations that may present a challenge to some attendees. The gallery workshop team requests your individual judgment to abstain from workshop activities that may be beyond your capabilities.
Although the workshop instructors will try to accommodate all attendees, please be advised that the gallery relies on your abstinence should you feel that a site location may not be safe for you.
Cancellation Policy
The Ansel Adams Gallery Multiple Day Workshop Cancellation Policy: We rely on your confirmed attendance to make important arrangements for the workshop. If you need to cancel, please inform a gallery representative in writing no fewer than 60 days prior to the first day of your scheduled workshop for a partial refund of your tuition that reflects the 10% non-refundable administration charge. Refunds cannot be made for cancellations initiated within 60 days of the first day of the scheduled workshop, or for no-shows, for any reason.
If you are concerned with the possibility of cancellation, please consider purchasing travel insurance.
Workshop registration is NOT transferable.
In the extremely rare event that The Ansel Adams Gallery needs to cancel a workshop, the gallery will refund your full tuition. However, The Ansel Adams Gallery will not be responsible for non-refundable airline tickets, car rentals charges, lodging reservations, or any other expense outside of the workshop tuition.
Lodging reservations made through Yosemite Hospitality - Aramark are fully refundable 14 days in advance of the scheduled first day of check in.
It is recommended not to purchase airline tickets or make non-refundable deposits on lodging that cannot be canceled 14 days prior to the initiation of the workshop event.
The Ansel Adams Gallery highly recommends travel insurance to help with an unfortunate travel event.
This pre-workshop information may be emailed to the education coordinator at photoed@anseladams.com.
