Disclosure: This article was brought to you by Muench Workshops.
Photography trips draw people for different reasons. Some travelers bring a camera because they want a reason to go deeper into a place. Others want to build a specific skill, such as photographing unfamiliar wildlife or cultures. Seven destinations from Muench Workshops’ newly launched photography workshops 2028 calendar serve both goals.
Each trip poses a different problem. The Yellowstone workshop asks photographers to find abstract shapes in a familiar park. The Zambia workshop asks them to tell a story that extends past a single animal portrait.
If the wildlife side of these trips appeals to you, Decade-Long Search Reveals Newest Wild Cat Species shows how patience in the field can pay off.
Photography workshops 2028 at a glance
Yellowstone: Abstraction in winter
Winter strips Yellowstone of much of its summer traffic and noise. What remains is a simpler, more graphic landscape. Deep snow turns forests and valleys into bands of white and pale blue, and steam rises slowly from the geothermal areas.
Heavy snow also reduces busy forest scenes to bold shapes and open negative space. Ice crystals and geothermal textures reward close, macro-style work. Wildlife can fit into the abstraction too, especially when dark animal forms stand out against bright snow.
Matt Payne, a photographer and Muench Workshops leader, describes the park’s winter character in plain terms. “Fewer people, more steam, sharper light, and wildlife that does not care about your comfort level,” he says.
Pro tip: Near frost or ice crystals, depth of field can shrink to a few millimeters, even at f/16 or f/22. Aligning the camera’s sensor parallel to the detail you want sharp helps maximize what stays in focus. For subjects with more depth, try focus stacking, which blends several frames focused at different distances.
Featured workshop: Winter Abstracts in Yellowstone | January 12–16, 2028
Japan: Two kinds of winter order
Hokkaido, Japan‘s northernmost main island, becomes a field of white in winter. Farmland disappears under snow, leaving lone trees, distant farm buildings and narrow roads as isolated subjects.
Farther south, in the mountains of Tohoku, the challenge reverses. Open space gives way to dense forest, where photographers must find structure among overlapping trunks and branches. On Mount Zao, heavy snow and strong wind coat the trees in ice, producing the eerie formations called “snow monsters.”
Photographer David Thompson sums up the contrast. He calls Japan in winter “two extremes of winter landscape photography: the very clean, minimalist landscapes of Hokkaido and then those graphic, chaotic snow monsters.” Simplifying a scene and organizing a busy one require different instincts, and the workshop trains both.
Pro tip: Bright snow can fool the camera’s meter into rendering white as gray. In automatic exposure modes, start with +1 to +2 stops of exposure compensation, then adjust for conditions. Check the histogram, a graph of tonal values, and the highlight warnings to keep the snow bright without losing texture. Shooting in RAW gives you more room to correct exposure later.
Featured workshop: Japan’s Hokkaido and Ou Mountains | February 1–12, 2028
Drakensberg: Weather as the subject
The Drakensberg is one of Africa‘s great mountain ranges and among South Africa‘s most dramatic landscapes. Its weather changes fast, and that volatility is the main reason to shoot there.
A clear morning can turn overcast within seconds. Clouds can build through the day and break into thunderstorms in the afternoon. Other mornings bring the reverse: a cloud inversion fills the valleys with mist, and only the highest peaks rise above it into the first light.
Marc Muench, who will co-lead the workshop, explains the draw. “This is a place where the atmospheric conditions make it pretty otherworldly,” he says. He adds that he looks forward to shooting in such rapidly changing weather and seeing shafts of light fall onto the spectacular spires.
The main photographic task here is scale. Photographers must find structure in vast, complicated scenes and use clouds, mist and ridgelines to suggest depth. The high summit plateau is hard to reach, so Muench Workshops uses a chartered helicopter to get the group to a pre-established camp. Participants in the photography workshops 2028 Drakensberg trip can return to the same compositions over several mornings and evenings and watch how weather and light change the view.
Pro tip: When sun breaks through a downpour, a rainbow can form opposite the sun. Place the sun behind you and watch the storm with a wide lens. Rainbows show most clearly when the sun sits low, so plan for early mornings and late afternoons.
Featured workshop: South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains | March 21 – April 1, 2028
Bhutan: People within the landscape
Prayer flags move across mountain passes in Bhutan‘s high valleys, and monks in crimson robes walk between cliffside monasteries. Rhododendrons color the slopes in spring. In the warmer valleys around Punakha, jacaranda trees bloom.
Cultural photography demands a different kind of storytelling, and the Bhutan trip in the photography workshops 2028 lineup is built around it. The Ura Yakchoe Festival is a clear example. Sacred masked dances, ceremonies and community gatherings in the mountains of central Bhutan give photographers room to document both the rituals and the quieter moments around them.
Joseph Roybal, a photographer and workshop leader, recalls arriving with few expectations. “Bhutan was almost a blank canvas for me,” he says. He describes how the landscape, the people and the culture came together in photographs he had not planned. He also credits the guides and their Buddhist outlook with a lesson: let go when a shot does not go as envisioned, and stay present behind the camera.
Pro tip: Ask permission before photographing anyone, especially a monk or an elder. A smile and a nod toward the camera often make the request clear. Rules differ between temples and monasteries, so confirm them at each site, particularly before photographing religious ceremonies or entering sacred spaces.
Featured workshop: Bhutan: Kingdom in the Clouds | April 2–14, 2028
Alaska: Following bears through the season
In Katmai National Park on the Alaska Peninsula, brown bears do not stay put. They move toward food, so the best location depends on the month.
In June, at Hallo Bay on the coast, brown bears graze on sedges and spring grasses in coastal meadows before the salmon run. June is also mating season, and it is a good time to see spring cubs learning from their mothers.
By August, salmon have returned from the North Pacific and gather at the mouths of creeks such as Moraine Creek. The bears follow them, patrolling the channels and fishing the streams. The workshop camp sits beside small lakes near key salmon spawning streams, which gives photographers long stretches of time to watch the animals.
Pro tip: Decide on your shot before the action starts, because bears move faster than most people can change settings. Use a shutter speed of 1/1000 second or faster to freeze a leaping salmon. To show motion instead, such as a bear shaking water from its head, set a slower shutter speed in advance.
Featured workshop: Bears in the Wild: Hallo Bay | June 16–23, 2027
Featured workshop: Bears in the Wild: Moraine Creek | August 23–30, 2028
Zambia: Telling a wildlife story
A strong wildlife photograph does not always need a tight portrait of a lion or leopard. Behavior, habitat and small interactions can connect a single frame to a larger account of a place. The Lower Zambezi offers that range.
The river splits into channels, lagoons, islands and sandbars. To the north, the valley opens onto plains and mature winterthorn forest. A morning might follow a leopard, reveal wild dogs crossing the plains, or show lion cubs playing in dust.
Smaller scenes matter as much as the big sightings. A cautious impala standing among trees, oxpeckers working along a buffalo’s back, and tracks pressed into sandy ground all help build a narrative.
Richard Bernabe, a wildlife photographer who leads photography workshops, treats animal behavior as the foundation of this approach. Anticipating a strong frame depends on reading what an animal is about to do.
Bernabe’s habit of reading animal behavior before pressing the shutter shows up across his work, too. Browse Richard Bernabe’s Enigmatic Nature Photography Portfolio for more on hidden animal stories.
“Once you’ve got the first portraits out of your system, start looking for gesture and body language,” Bernabe says. “It can be incredibly subtle: a yawn, a raised paw, a stretch. A lion that has been lying down may yawn several times before getting up. You begin to recognize those signals and get yourself ready for what might happen.”
Pro tip: Work like a photo editor. A complete sequence usually includes an establishing wide shot, a medium shot, a portrait, a close detail and some action. Photographers often skip the detail, which in this landscape might be animal tracks or a beetle moving through dung. After each morning, review your images and ask which of those five elements is missing.
Featured workshop: Wildlife Storytelling in Zambia
Indonesia: Dragons and orangutans
Komodo’s open, sunlit islands are home to the world’s largest living lizard. Borneo’s lowland rainforests shelter orangutans that move through the canopy.
Boats reach both locations, but each demands its own approach. On Komodo, you work at ground level and aim for low angles that show a dragon’s size. The main challenges are exposing a dark animal against a bright background and keeping the frame clean.
The work here involves catching eye contact and interaction, separating the orangutan from dense foliage, managing high ISO noise and holding a long lens steady on a moving boat.
Pro tip: With orangutans in the canopy, autofocus often locks onto the nearest leaves. Select a small autofocus area and place it on the animal’s eye. A wide aperture can soften distracting branches in front of the subject. If autofocus struggles with dense vegetation, switch to manual focus for more control.
These seven trips represent a portion of the photography workshops 2028 lineup Muench Workshops has just announced. For photographers deciding where to spend their next year, the calendar offers seven different lessons in what a camera can reveal when the conditions push back.
Sources & Links
- Japan’s Hokkaido and Ou Mountains | February 1–12, 2028
- South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains | March 21 – April 1, 2028
- Wild Indonesia: Orangutans and Dragons | October 2–13, 2028
- Kathy Lichtendahl
- Mark Davis
- Alex Nail
- Wayne Suggs
Frequently asked questions
When is the Winter Abstracts in Yellowstone workshop held?
The Winter Abstracts in Yellowstone workshop runs from January 12 to 16, 2028. It focuses on finding abstract shapes in the park’s snowy winter landscape.
When do the Japan Hokkaido and Ou Mountains workshops take place?
The Japan’s Hokkaido and Ou Mountains workshop is scheduled for February 1 to 12, 2028. It covers both the open, minimalist snowfields of Hokkaido and the snow-covered forests of the Ou Mountains.
How does the Drakensberg workshop reach its high summit plateau?
The summit plateau is hard to reach, so Muench Workshops uses a chartered helicopter to take the group to a pre-established camp. Participants can then return to the same compositions over several mornings and evenings.
What are the “snow monsters” photographers can see in Japan’s Tohoku mountains?
Snow monsters are formations on Mount Zao where heavy snow and strong wind coat the trees in ice. They appear in the dense forests of the Tohoku mountains in Japan.
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