This is the third year for these photography retreats and I had wanted to go the past two, but things didn’t work out until this year. I reserved my spot early and then when I was booking my flight to Las Vegas from Victoria I, found out that there were no longer any direct flights there. I had to connect in Vancouver, where I then had a couple hours to wait between flights. By the time I got in, I didn’t feel like an hour’s drive out to the desert, which I had considered doing on my own, so instead I met with a bunch of the other first time attendees at the hotel, where we spent some time getting to know each other. The interaction of photographers of various backgrounds was one of the things that really makes this retreat special.
The presenters were all very friendly and happy to share their knowledge with everyone. Many of them had podcasts or YouTube channels that I already followed, so it was almost like I knew them before even meeting them.
At the end of the first day, there was an optional trip out to the Valley of Fire, which was a little over an hour drive from our hotel, just off the strip in Vegas.
By the time we got out to the Valley of Fire, we only had a couple of hours until sunset… which is when the park closes. There was so much to see that there is no way such little time could do anything more that whet your appetite to come back for more, but I was able to make some nice images with the sun setting on the red rocks. All too quickly, the sun was disappearing and I found myself having to move very briskly to make it back to the car… and saw a Ranger waiting there to make sure the last few people returned to their vehicles before the park was closed.
I got back to the hotel with time to take a 90 minute nap before getting up for another hour+ long drive into the desert. This time it was to do some Astrophotography, with Aaron King and Brendon Porter of Photog Adventures. They had some great tips to pass along and introduced us to low level lighting for the shoot.
There was also an optional trip to Red Rock Canyon at 6 AM the next morning, but having just got back to the hotel around 4 AM, I chose to skip that one. After another full day of information, including a review / critique of a couple of my photos, we wrapped up late that evening. The next morning I got up before dawn to get out to Red Rock Canyon on my own, to make up for not being able to get out with the group the previous morning. Unfortunately, I had picked up a cold the day before and was feeling a little run down, so was slower getting out than I hopped. I did make it in time, but without a lot of extra time to check out the area and get set up like I would have preferred. In the end I was very happy with where I ended up and some of the images I made there.
I attended the retreat with the goal of working on my landscape photography, post processing of the images, and more about working with social media and all those goals were more than met. In addition, I had the chance to try some other types of photography which were fun and enhanced the experience.
I had a great time and am looking forward to attending another one of these retreats in the future. I hope you enjoyed this blog post. I will have a video of the trip on my YouTube channel in the near future. Thanks for checking it out!
Wild Drake Photography 
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