Hey Y'all ! How's your day going? Mine? Great ! Thanks for asking. Today I want to announce a big photography trip that I will be taking this year. It will be a week long trip and will have airplane travel . I have taken a few big trips in the past some with my photography club and some with my Photography Wingman Robert. This trip I'll be taking with 3 folks from my photography club and it will be packed with photography opportunities ! Past trip that will compare to this one is the Utah trip where we were gone for 10 days saw 5 national parks 3 state parks and a couple of really cool towns. You can see more about that trip in this blog. Utah Trip Review  This was a fantastic trip! Epic! Hopefully this one will too! Ready for the big announcement?  Here it goes.

Our big trip this year will be to South Dakota! I know a hush has fallen over the crowd. People don't really know about South Dakota. I have seen it ranked #2 most boring state behind Idaho the #1. But for a photographer it has a lot to offer! Two National Parks, National monuments , The Black hills, Cowboys and cowboy towns , Wildlife like bison , elk, deer, rams , bears. Lots of cool stuff for a photographer. I have to admit that I didn't know much about South Dakota before I started researching it. Robert came up with the idea mostly because he's into Astro/Night photography right now and it's one of the best places to shoot the stars which we will be doing hopefully successfully.  But as I started researching I kept finding gems to photograph. When we first started planning we saw that Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons were only a state away and we rushed into planning an even bigger trip. But the time effort and money it would take to see the two iconic places wasn't worth it in this trip so we concentrated mostly on South Dakota.

We plan on spending a week in Rapid City SD as our base. Our longest drive will be a hour and 45 min to Devils Tower in Wyoming. This means only one hotel to book and returning the rental car to the same place is cheaper than driving to another town. We will fly in and out of the same place which makes that cheaper. It will be a more relaxed trip than the Utah trip where we stayed in 5 different places so I'm looking forward to that. Day trips will include, The Badlands National Park, Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore and Wind cave National Park, Devils Tower and Deadwood, Steam train ride between Hill City and Keystone SD.  As you can see lots of opportunities to get great landscape, and wildlife photos. We will also have some night shoots sprinkled in just for fun. One might be Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane's grave site in Deadwood. Aces and Eights! Since the shooting and driving will be less there will be more time to shoot and relax and won't have the pressure of getting to the next place the next day.

I'm hoping that this will be a great adventure like the Utah trip was. But make no bones about it an adventure will be had. We've made the plane, hotel and rental reservations and have started counting the days before we leave. Still planning and refining our itinerary .  So now you know where I'm going the next blog will tell you what gear I'm taking with me. So until next week Get Out and Shoot! 

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 post there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link