The workshop was based at Meadowlark Gardens in Vienna Virginia.  All of the lecture time and most of the field work took place at the gardens which was nice because it minimized the driving between locations at $4/gallon.  The only field exercise exception was a Sunday morning side trip to Great Falls National Park and the creek at Scott’s Run.  Overall field vs lecture time was split about 50-50.

Much to our surprise, the workshop had only twelve participants AND that included the two of us.  All participants were shooting with DSLR’s.  Most were shooting with Nikon cameras which was a switch from the usual Canon dominance at most of the workshops we attended in the last couple years.  A couple Canon and Olympus DSLRs were on hand.  One of the Nikon DSLR shooters even captured a few frames with a camera utilizing large format transparencies.  I also had my infrared modified P&S along and captured some images with it.

Corey Hilz worked with us in the field, covered some technique, and handled the photo critiques.  In addition he arranged for us to work with and hear from three other photographers.

William B Folsom is the resident Meadowlark Garden photographer who handled logistics for the weekend.  In addition, Bill covered butterfly habits and technique for photographing them.  Unfortunately, the butterflies were absent for the field exercise because of recent rains.

Joseph Rossbach worked with us on capturing some macro and scenic images.  Joe also led the field trip to Great Falls National Park and to Scott’s Run.  Joe took some of his images from the field trip and later led us through his typical computer work flow.

Mark DiLallo covered bird photography.  His lecture covered equipment, technique, and places to photograph birds.  For the field exercise part of the topic arrangements were made for the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia to bring in some hawks and owls for us to photograph.