The following is a guest post by David Wells, who has participated in several of my workshops, including Winter Moon at Grand Canyon, Monsoon on the North Rim, and my 10-Day Rafting the Colorado River expedition. David emailed me recently and offered to share his thoughts about what I do differently in my workshops.
I have been doing landscape photography for over 20 years, and I have traveled with some great photographers as guides. In all that time, I have never met a photo instructor who has taught me so much about getting high resolution, low noise, good color depth, and great composition in landscape photography like Adam Schallau. He has taught me an efficient workflow to get the most out of my equipment in fast-changing light. If you want to create images that can print large at museum quality, Adam is your guy. If you want someone who can simplify your decision-making in the field by helping you understand how your camera and other equipment work to capture the most information with the least noise, Adam is your guy. If you want a guide to the Grand Canyon, who was the Grand Canyon Artist-In-Residence, who has rafted the Colorado river eight times, driven to the most remote vistas, and hiked extensively, Adam is your guy. If you want an artist whose compositional eye has produced numerous covers for Arizona Highways, National Geographic Traveler, and many other magazines, Adam is your guy. Though he knows the Grand Canyon better than anyone else, the reason to go out shooting with Adam Schallau is that he will teach you how to get the best possible image from your equipment. That’s a skill that can be transferred anywhere you choose to shoot.
Since we photographers understand the world in visual terms, I am including a shot from a workshop I took with him last year. First of all, he planned the location well in advance to get light from the setting moon balanced with pre-dawn light to get the best illumination of the scene. Then he got me out to a spot I would have never found or had the courage to get to myself. The composition is my own, but the image quality is due to what I learned from Adam. ~ David Wells
