Photography Tour abroad

GatoAzul1968

GatoAzul1968

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I'm sure you have seen so many Photography Tour abroad - for example to: Kenya to see The Great Migration, Galapagos Islands for the marine wildlife animals, Patagonia in the Southern Argentina/Chile for the beautiful landscape, and so on.......

Do you think it is worth going there on Photography Tour? Many of them costs £4k - £10k. Some or most of the money goes to photographers wages, pay for their accommodation, food and of course their air fares (probably 1st or business class).

Do you think it is best if I go on NORMAL tour (non-photography) and take the photography by myself from what I've already learnt earlier?

What do you think?
 
Only you can decide whether it's worth it *to you*.

I have a good working relationship with Paul Goldstein, who leads photographic tours for Exodus, and I have some idea of his methods.

Paul works very hard to deliver value for his clients - effectively to justify his position there. So you'll get woken up in the middle of the night if there's anything interesting happening. You'll go out earlier, and stay out longer, and come back in later, than other groups. You'll get photography tuition during the day and critique in the evening. His team will act in such a way as to maximise your chances of getting good photos - not just animals, but animals doing interesting things. And so on. A tour with Paul is expensive, it's demanding, it's hard work - and his clients love it.

I expect other decent photographic tour leaders would behave similarly, though probably not to quite such a psychotic extent.
 
StewartR said:
Only you can decide whether it's worth it *to you*.

I have a good working relationship with Paul Goldstein, who leads photographic tours for Exodus, and I have some idea of his methods.

Paul works very hard to deliver value for his clients - effectively to justify his position there. So you'll get woken up in the middle of the night if there's anything interesting happening. You'll go out earlier, and stay out longer, and come back in later, than other groups. You'll get photography tuition during the day and critique in the evening. His team will act in such a way as to maximise your chances of getting good photos - not just animals, but animals doing interesting things. And so on. A tour with Paul is expensive, it's demanding, it's hard work - and his clients love it.

I expect other decent photographic tour leaders would behave similarly, though probably not to quite such a psychotic extent.
Click to expand...


Thank you Stewart. I looked at his site, and am adding his to my favourite folder.

However, I won't be able to do any "£4k+" tours until I've gain better confidence. I'll start something small for the time being. Maybe next year.
 
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It is possible to do photography on normal tours I have done it myself to India and Zambia and was really pleased with everything including the photos that I came back with
Stuart is right tho if I had the budget I would pay the extra for a dedicated tour
it's little things like with a normal tour you will be sharing the jeep with other people including non photographers
With a dedicated tour you will have less people to each jeep the best ones have just one person to each row of seats in the jeep
as it happens I was lucky and had a good experience on my tours but next time I'm hoping to be able to go on a dedicated photo tour:)
 
When it comes to wildlife and landscape photography, there's no such thing as a certainty; animals and the weather march to the beat of the own drum. All you can do is use planning and field-craft to tilt the odds in your favour, and that's where these sort of photography-led holidays aim to deliver.

Clearly it's not impossible to take good photos on what you've labelled 'normal' trips. I was on a 'normal' trip to the Galápagos last year and came away with lots of good photos. But I'm also certain that I'd away come away with more and better photos if I'd been on a yacht dedicated to the needs of photography. The law in the Galápagos islands is that you can only land between sunrise and sunset, which for the equatorial location basically translates to 6am-6pm. Any photographer will then tell you that the plan should be to run shore-trips for 6am-9am and then 3pm-6pm, food and sleep with be scheduled around that. However if you tried that on the general holiday crowd for more than the odd day, they'd probably revolt; people want their sleep, breakfast and time to prepare before the think about heading out. So we were having breakfast at 7am, gathering for the landing boats at 8am, and not really landing until close to 9am. By which time the sun is high and the light harsh. As a photographer, once you've found a good subject you want to work it until you feel you've done it justice. But a lot of people get bored easily, so the tour guides know to not loiter for too long and keep everything moving. The law on the islands is that you have to stay close to your guide so you have no choice but to walk away from things you haven't finished photographing.


So what's significant about these trips isn't just that you're accompanied by a pro photographer, but every last thing is planned around the question of 'how to we maximise the photograph productivity?'. So that means that food and sleep are scheduled around the photography and not the other way around. However the thing that keeps the cost high is that the guest numbers are typically kept low. For example, rather than having eight guests in your safari vehicle, it's only four. The aim is everybody always has their own spot, but means there is a larger share of rental and guide costs.

If they're worth it depends on your own financial situation and just how important photography is to you. I've been on two, one to photograph seals and one to bears in Finland, and I hope to go on many more. In the next few days I might put down a deposit on a trip in 2016.
 
its very interesting. I have never been on one. I am not a pro, but likes taking pictures as a hobby. Does anyone think I would fit in with dedicated pros?
 
In my experience, most of the guests will either be retired or the cash-rich-time-poor, because they're the ones who can afford the price regularly. It's unlikely you'd turn up and find it's just you and working professional photographers. Certainly when I've been, it was just a bunch of people with a shared interest in photography and there was no snobbery or alpha-male stuff.
 
Usually, I'd say planning your trip with few others is the best value for money. Obviously I am not sure if this possible for a place like galapagos islands, but for patagonia, I am sure you can come up with an itinerary after some research.
I have been to Iceland and Scandinavia few times on my own and the freedom you get for going wherever you want is amazing. I am sure it'd be very similar if you did it with few mates.
 
Thank you very much for the interesting and useful postings :)
 
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