(FORTUNE Small Business) – I'm shivering on the shores of Jackson lake at dawn, waiting to catch my prey in the cross hairs. The sun is just beginning to peek over the horizon. Where are those rabbits, bison, and elk when you need them? This is the part of stalking game that requires patience, but I have no doubt I'm in the right place--Grand Teton National Park, about ten minutes outside Jackson, Wyo. The area epitomizes old-fashioned Western ambiance: wooden sidewalks, a park entrance framed by giant elk antlers, and a popular watering hole called the Silver Dollar Bar. Moreover, it teems with wildlife. But instead of a rifle, my weapon is a Nikon D70 digital camera.

I've come to Jackson for Photography at the Summit, a weeklong digital workshop for professional, aspiring, and hobbyist photographers. The workshop is run by Rich Clarkson, 73, who has the kind of résumé that other photographers only dream about. Over the years, Clarkson has worked on contract for magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Time, and Life (all of which, like FSB, are published by Time Inc.). He spent three years in the late 1980s at National Geographic, where he ultimately became director of photography. When he left that magazine in 1989, he started Denver-based Rich Clarkson & Associates, which has grown to ten employees and $1.2 million in annual revenues.

Clarkson & Associates publishes books and handles all photography for the Colorado Rockies baseball club and the NFL's Denver Broncos, in addition to NCAA events. In 2005, Clarkson photographed his 50th NCAA basketball Final Four tournament--images from 12 of them have graced the cover of Sports Illustrated. His company also conducts several workshops, including one on sports photography and another geared to amateurs. My program costs $1,500--not including lodging, transportation, or meals--and provides attendees with career and technical advice from some of the most renowned photographers and photo editors in the country. It is offered twice a year. (The fall session takes place Oct. 2-7.)

I am one of ten women in a class of 35, a mixed bunch with myriad aspirations: college students hoping to break into the field, retirees in search of a second career, and working photographers trying to make the leap to the big time. Most have more photography experience than I do, but that doesn't mean they're ready to unseat Ansel Adams. "My wife insisted that if I'm going to hang my pictures, I'm going to have to take better ones," admits one attendee.

Some vacation workshops are heavy on the vacation component and light on the workshop, but this is not one of them. I realize early on that the program is as much about time management as about using digital equipment. The challenge is to attend the scheduled lectures and workshops, find time to photograph, practice what you've learned, and get enough sleep to function competently.

Each day we divide into groups of nature photographers, photojournalists, and generalists, and shoot pictures for hours at a stretch. The best time to take nature photographs, it turns out, is right before sunrise. We have the choice of going in groups with an instructor, but I opt to go out on my own, figuring that it might be tough for eight people to sneak up on an elk. I'm barely awake when I jump into my SUV rental and set out for places with names like Moose Junction, Snake River, and Antelope Flats in search of that one great shot.

The area surrounding Jackson is a photographer's paradise. An hour's drive north are Yellowstone National Park's geysers, bison herds, and waterfalls. Ten minutes north are Grand Teton National Park and the National Elk Refuge, home to the largest elk herd in the lower 48 states.

"The good news is that the bears are just waking up from hibernation, so they won't be hungry," Clarkson says. "The bad news: They might have young cubs and are likely to be cranky." I'm rethinking my decision not to spring for that $65 can of bear repellent I saw in the gift shop.

The Nikon D70 digital cameras we use are professional caliber and put my little point-and-shoot 35 mm version to shame. (I spend much of the first night trying to decipher the book-length instruction manual.) Nikon introduced the D70 in early 2004 in the new sub-$1,000 digital SLR market, where it competes with comparable products from Canon and Pentax. It has six megapixels and offers a menu of file-saving options previously available only on digital cameras that cost four times as much. The D70 has a Multi-CAM900 auto-focus system, which lets the camera figure out the right f-stop and aperture speed, so you don't have to set it manually. (Clarkson, despite his decades of experience, isn't tied to the old ways. He began moving to digital cameras five years ago and now uses film only for special pictures, such as panoramas.)

After our morning session in the woods, we reconvene at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, which functions as the classroom and image-processing center, to review and select our three best images for the instructors' critiques later that morning. These sessions are feared among students, as the instructors pull no punches. At 11 A.M. the lights in the auditorium go down, student images fill the screen, and the faculty unloads. Oh, the pressure. Innovations aside, digital cameras have not changed the basics of good photography. The instructors stress composition, lighting, focus, and subject. Fine-arts photographer Jay Maisel is the equivalent of American Idol's Simon Cowell. "It's a crap picture," he tells one student, without any preamble to soften the blow. "When you take a picture this bad, don't show it to anybody." As Maisel puts it, we're paying too much money to be lied to.

Over the course of the week, however, the critiques become the most helpful part of the workshop. Simply having your mistakes pointed out to you day after day--and seeing them in the work of other students--makes you less inclined to repeat them. A few simple tips, such as narrowing your focus and ridding the frame of anything extraneous, can lead to better pictures. All our work improves--and some students were pretty good when they showed up. In the past, Clarkson says, several photographers at his workshop have made contacts that led to paying work for top-tier magazines. One Los Angeles-based photographer even left with a contract for a book of her work.

I doubt I will ever land such a deal. Photography at that level requires a great deal of passion and patience. Some of my classmates have both; I have neither. But although much of the workshop was over my head, I have absorbed some understanding of digital photography almost by osmosis. Words that sounded foreign to me a week ago no longer do. I now know that "RAW" (which doesn't stand for anything) refers to unprocessed data or a digital negative, not uncooked food, and that a hot shoe is the connector on top of the camera for a separate flash, not overheated footwear.

In other words, the next time I want to impress my friends and family with vacation photos, I may not have to bribe them with wine and dinner beforehand. I'm sure they'll be thrilled.