Spain photography holidays gallery link

Spain photography holidays

Spain photography holidays

Our Spain photography holidays are targeted for photographers with a good grasp of how to use their camera but who would like to get some magical shots of nature. For this July and May next year I’m running an 8 night tour centred on Andalusia’s highlights. There’ll be a series of instructive ‘light’ workshops to a variety of locations including rivers, waterfalls, cork and oak forests and rocky coast shorelines. With group sizes limited to 5 it’s a unique opportunity to get the most from these unique locations. For more information take a look at the tour page.

Andalusia as a location is a day’s haul from me and one that gives a completely unique type of landscape. Woods, streams and craggy coastline are in close proximity and each provide extraordinary challenges. The primary regions of interest are in the Los Alcornocales Park Natural and the mining areas close to Seville. Photographing trees has always held an interest for me, the pre-occupation being to find form amongst the chaos. For this assignment I traveled in spring to western Andalusia and set myself a project of manufacturing a gallery in three weeks. Early on I started to see the locations in image pairs, in double page book form, so locating pictures that would work well together became a part of the plan and every day I would do some rudimentary processing to see how this panned out. Among the woods are cork and their bark gives robust textures. There’s also holm okay blending into a few wooded area scenes which adds colour variation. For those shots I wanted a classical timeless feel with a hint of abstraction. I have a tendency to scope for tighter compositions and mainly use a telephoto to assist attain this. Loaded Landscapes very kindly published my article and photographs from one of our recent Spain photography holidays.

10 photography tips for beginners | how to take better travel photos

Photography tips for beginners by Darren Lewey

photography tips for beginners

I don’t have the figures to hand on global travel but it seems travel further afield is increasingly popular and with it the desire to produce good photos to show to friends and family or to satisfy a creative need. Here are my 10 photography tips for beginners on how to take better travel photos and certainly something to be considered ahead of one of the numerous photography tours available.

Continue reading

Fare news – it pays to book early

https://www.facebook.com/imagesinthesun

Whilst last minute bookings with the two main carriers to Marrakesh:  BA(formerly BMI) and Easyjet, don’t offer much for the budget conscious, there are good deals to be had by booking in advance with prices as low as £170 for return flights after the peak rush, beginning in January and February next year with BA.  BA’s new policy of going head to head with Easyjet over prices seems to be paying dividends based on a significant number of photography holiday attendees here now choosing BA.  Price wise there’s little in it with lunch included on the BA flight.

Ryanair has now curtailed its flights to Marrakesh and indeed most of Morocco with few options out of the UK after a dispute over handling charges this summer.  In other news, Thompson are offering good value flights on a Friday to Marrakesh; details here; whilst this site offers a good overview of Europe wide flights to Marrakesh.

Peak season flight hikes are never appreciated by anybody least of all teachers, so we’ve got some offers on the go for this xmas to soften the blow a little.  See our offers page for dates.

Blue skies through the winter.

Since the last blog it’s been a busy time with photography courses in Essaouira, alongside cooking weeks and the launch of a new tour off the back of trip to Morocco’s south east…John and Clare Simmons came out and each enjoyed their own activity,  John with a week’s cooking with Naima and Clare with myself and Shimona who’d booked through Goleranto for a week’s photography holiday.  An extremely cool head in the kitchen John breezed through the week’s recipes.

Also in March, Eva, Jane, Emma, James all arrived independently and enjoyed mostly cloud free days.  The rains this year failed to materialise at the crucial time and there was only a splatter in late March, not enough to encourage the wheat.  A photography holiday without rain is a given and we’re very lucky in Essaouira in that the few rainy days we have are confined to mostly overnight showers.  ‘March 5’s’ galleries can be seen here.

Caroline and Lucy,  our first guest from Hong Kong,  took advantage of mid April’s fine weather and produced some memorable galleries of photos.  The waterfalls as Sidi M’bark have seen a better flow of water in the past but nonetheless the local boys and shepherds still took advantage of its natural beauty and grazing potential. Blue skies and an assortment of rich earthy colours typify the geology of this area south of Essaouira.  Gazing at Morocco’s map will tell you that the Atlas mountains start in this region.

May has now arrived and bookings are coming in for October and beyond.  Available dates are published on the Essaouira page so get in touch to reserve your week’s holiday.