My next workshop in 2015 was at Canyon de Chelley with photographer Leroy Dejolie and my good friend Jeff Insel. I had been to the canyon years earlier and always wanted to return. Yay me!

This was a transformative workshop for me. I was only a year and a half into the Highways workshop gig and still learning how to run things. It was my third five-day workshop and I was settling in with making relationships with my people my priority for the trip, not landscape photography. It’s the first trip I wrote down the names of the participants in my travel journal with a short note next to their names so I would remember them better. It was also the first workshop where the participants had real downtime to work on images or just take it all in. There is something to be said for that.

It was also the first time I put together a video of the trip to music that featured the people, not the scenery. I can’t locate the video, it must be one of the “lost files”. I’m not sure this platform could handle it anyway.

I took a shuttle to Phoenix the afternoon before where Jeff picked me up so we could go run our photoguide errands: picking up snacks and water for the week, going to the office, and grabbing things there we’d need and picking up the vans we would be driving.

The next morning we met our crew at a Holiday Inn near the airport in Phoenix, loaded them up, and drove to Winslow where we met Leroy at La Posada for lunch. Leroy was coming from Page and his wife dropped him off.  It was a five-day trip (Wed-Sun) but given that the first and last days were travel days we only had three full days to photograph the area.

Once arriving at our hotel in Chinle, AZ we headed out to Tsegi Overlook for our first shoot under heavy clouds. I don’t have any images from that excursion.

The next morning, Thursday, we loaded a tour truck and headed out on an eight-hour tour of Canyon del Muerto. Canyon de Chelley has one entrance before splitting into two canyons.

We saw ruins, petroglyphs, homes and fall colors.

It was a glorious day.

Friday was model day. Following a sunrise shoot at Junction Overlook we went back to the hotel for breakfast and to wait for Leroy to call us together for a model shoot. He managed to locate a couple of folks to sit indoors under studio lighting and pose for us in their beautiful native dress.

We were treated to a sheepherder on horseback out on the sand dunes in the afternoon.

On Saturday we did a half-day tour of Canyon de Chelley in a truck. The sunrise and sunset shoots were all rim locations.

On the way back to Phoenix Sunday we drove through Ganado and stopped at Hubbel Trading Post National Historic Site.

In 1878, John Lorenzo Hubbell purchased this trading post, ten years after Navajos were allowed to return to the Ganado region from their U.S.-imposed exile in Bosque Redondo, Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This ended what is known in Navajo history as the “Long Walk of the Navajo.”

It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960.

The trading post is still active, operated by the non-profit Western National Parks Association, which maintains the trading traditions the Hubbell family established.

Today, Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site is still situated on the original 160-acre homestead, which includes the trading post, family home, outbuildings, land and a visitor center. Visitors can experience this historic trading post on the Navajo Nation, which includes weaving demonstrations; and the store still maintains a wooden floor and walls from the days of old. A set of initials carved on the gate of the privacy wall which separates the public spaces from the private stand for John Lorenzo Hubbell.

We stopped at La Posada again for lunch.

I highly recommend this workshop and if you go on your own remember, you are not allowed to enter the canyons on your own, you need a local guide.

Happy Shooting!!