A Photo Master Class with David Muench

I just finished a 4 day desert landscape photo class with the great David Muench. He was doing his workshop as part of the Palm Beach Photo Festival, a large venue for folks to take master classes from some of the better known pros in the business.

David is a big name if you follow landscape photography in the West and his stuff is a feast for those of us into landscapes. Here’s one of his shots taken in the Coachella Valley.

The Festival had plenty of other respected photographers: Mark Seliger did a lot of the famous musician and actor images:

Mary Ellen Mark did important reportage photos for Life and Look and now is doing more personal projects.

There are about 12 long workshops and a bunch of hour long sessions. But I’m focused on landscape stuff now after spending most of the last year photographing and writing a book on the Utah Parks. (Coming soon to an on-line publisher near you.) So this session with David was perfect.

Working with David

I didn’t expect David to revolutionize my style. I’ve been doing this work for years and in the last few years I’ve done more and more stuff that feels right. I did expect him to help me dive deeper into my craft. And I think I’m walking away with that. I also picked David’s brain for shooting locations to use for my next landscape photo/travel book. I’m targeting Arizona for that book and he knows the area like it’s his backyard.

An added benefit, I spent 4 days with 15 creative photographers. And that’s made me realize how much of the value of these advanced classes is the creative interactions with the other participants. Ray, Sandy, Barb, the Beths, Steve, Chris, they were all great. All doing their own unique exploration.

But the core of the sessions was David and in a week or so I’ll add an in-depth piece on what it’s like working with him.

We Begin Our Journey

The first Sunday late afternoon was our first group meeting. Now, this is Palm Springs at the tail end of April which means high 90s. So that first afternoon each of the groups had their first meeting outside. So we were all trying to find some shade. Our two coordinators, Darlene and Taya were there with the paperwork.

And at 79, David instantly reminded me of everyone’s favorite granddad. White beard, a weathered look, soft-spoken but with an intimate knowledge of every photo location from Texas to Alaska and an amazing portfolio (www.davidmuenchphotography.com). Kinda like Ansel Adams meets Mr Chips. Later I realized that my perception of the man was only scratching the surface.

The next morning David took us though a pile of his slides. I’d studied a bunch of his shots already from his web site. But David walked us through them from his personal POV, explored some of his techniques, using examples from spots we’d be shooting on this trip. Turns out that David has shot the parks on the area (Joshua Tree, Anza Borrega, 1000 Palms Oasis, etc) tons of times. That afternoon we all piled into a couple of vans and headed to our first location.

Indian Canyons

Indian Canyons is on tribal lands owned by the Agua Caliente indians. The park is just a few miles south of the Hilton and we headed up to the Andreas Canyon trailhead. The small stream is fed by an aquifer and the water supports a grove of palms. The contrast of lush grove and bleak desert, palm fronds and water are what make the shoot interesting.

David loves playing with form and color. Juxtaposing patterns, creating different visual elements that generate a visual dynamic. And we used the palms for that.

For this shot, I wanted to play off of the color and form of the three distinct palm frond areas.

The spring that feeds the grove was hard to get unique shots of. But I liked this blend of the dark light in the stream pool and the sun entering from the side.

Further up the trail I noticed a high cliff just north of the trail with some Cholla cactus catching the sunset light. It was a pain in the butt to get up the canyon wall, there was no trail and and the heat was stifling. But it was worth it.