Explore Journeys > Geography Tours > Travel Photography

TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY

The aim of this tour is to improve your travel photography in practical instruction that takes places in milieus that are photographically inspiring. The journey is open for everyone ranging from complete beginners to advanced amateur photographers – most of the instruction is hands-on, conducted on a one-to-one basis, a kind of coaching that is adjustable to the level of each participant in a disparate group.

We will visit a variety of exotic attractions – oasis of culture as well as pristine mountainous landscapes – that are outstanding in their own right. Then you learn to interact with the location through the lens, developing a knack of seeing the world through your camera. Aside from one-to-one coaching, we will have optional evening discussions that cover more aspects of photographic principles, theory, and techniques. The itinerary is designed to offer a range of subjects that lend themselves to different sub-genres of travel photography – this includes techniques invoked in photographing landscapes, people, action, food, nature, historical monuments and more. 

Instruction is by Victor Paul Borg, a freelance travel writer and photographer of 18 years, and now the creative force behind Pepper Mountains. Victor’s writing and pictures are published by some of the most respected magazines in the world. He has lived in various countries, and he understands Asia intimately after 10 years of living and travelling in Asia. You can see some of his pictures in Pepper Mountains. 

The tour is also open for your spouse or partner who isn’t interested in photography; he or she will also find the tour engrossing and rewarding. The places we visit are outstanding destinations in their own right, and your partner will find plenty of absorbing things to do that don’t involve a focus on photography. 

For a list of suggested equipment, as well as more detailed background on the techniques ad principles covered throughout the trip, please click on the Photography Dossier link at the bottom of this page. 

The itinerary will take us to the following places:

Wanglang

Set at the core of the Min Mountains, Wanglang consists of dense mountains and steep slopes and granite summits – the highest peak is about 4,500 metres. The habitats are among the most pristine in the world; the trees, which rise six or seven stories like ancient mammoths, have never been cut. Wanglang indeed presents a tapestry of landscapes and features that allow us to practice landscape and nature photography. We will practice composition and slow shutter speed to create curtains of water in thundering waterfalls, close-ups of flowers, the creation of mood in eerie and raw nature in dark forests where tree branches are swaddled in moss, and we will walk to a vantage point at the core of the mountains for sweeping landscape panoramas of a vast valley and peaks tumbling towards the horizon.

Jiuzhaigou

Jiuzhaigou is possibly Sichuan’s most famous sight, a piece of landscape renowned for its azure lakes and high waterfalls, elected as a World Heritage Site and a World Biosphere Reserve. It’s visited by hordes of tourists in the summer and autumn peak season, but we will get off the beaten track: we will visit a part of the reserve open only by special arrangement. There is a rustic village of Benbo Tibetans where we will get a chance to take pictures of outlandish characters, particularly the women with long hair touching their buttocks, as well as pictures of the rustic houses surrounded by prayer flags and the opulent prayer room found in each house. Then we will follow the pilgrims’ route to a holy mountain, the highest mountain in the region, where the pilgrims pray fervently and affix prayer flags. The vista from the top allows us to practice landscape photography, especially evocative in the mornings when the summits rise above a sea of mist. Finally, we will also spend a day touring the famous lakes and waterfalls and learning how to compose pictures of water features.

Tibetan grasslands

In Aba on the Tibetan plateau, there is a cacophony of Tibetan sights and sounds – restaurants, pilgrims, nomads on horses, shops selling daggers or dried yak meat, and so on. Most exotic and alluring are the grasslands: nomads encamped in yak-hide tents and huge herds of grazing yaks. Here we will explore the grasslands through photography, particularly learning how to enliven pictures of grasslands that are flat and bare – it’s a challenging subject, forcing the photographer to find patterns of composition in the landscape, easily-overlooked nature features, and using people and animals to create vivacious highlights in the pictures. You will learn the importance of people landscapes; in the grasslands, it’s the people that tell a photographic story, and that then become an essence of the landscape itself. 

Danba

The Tibetan flavour is different in Danba, where a scattering of quaint villages offer unlimited photographic potential. It’s a place so exotic – the houses constructed of mud or slate, the long defensive towers attached to the houses, the steep mountains, the colourful and outlandish people, the legendarily beautiful girls, and much more – that it’s almost impossible to take bad pictures. Of course the ideas is not only to take average holiday snaps, but to develop an eye for composition, light, and learn to work steadily and patiently with a camera. The girls might be gorgeous, the inhabitants extraordinary, but the trick with people photography is to capture mood and emotions – that’s what will raise your pictures to a wholly new dimension. 

Peasant villages

Several peasants’ villages are clustered in rich subtropical mountain valleys of Ya’an, a place where the terrain and landscape is wholly than the more frigid and alpine landscapes of north Sichuan in Wanglang and Jiuzhaigou. The people are also different: here, the Han peasants rake a living from the cultivation of major crops (mostly maize) and live in old-style wooden houses that seem to morph out of Chinese history books, decorated with folk prints and old Chinese recitations as well as figures of deities that ward evil and bring good luck. Houses also nestle in groves of bamboo stirring in the wind like huge fans of feathers – bamboo is planted around the houses partly for its value in making furniture and other household implements, and also for its totemic value (the peasants in the south of Sichuan believe that bamboo has talismanic powers). The area offers a palette of photographic potential, especially the atmospheric alleyways and wooden houses of the villages, the old arched stone bridges, the toil of peasants in their fields, the roadside deity shrines, and the town’s exotic market, where hole-in-the-wall eateries make corn bread and cured meats and other local foods. Farmers peddle vegetables; others settle in the shade sipping tea or playing mahjong or just whiling away the time in chit-chat.

Steam Train

The last steam train that runs commercially in China – and perhaps in the world – twists and hisses and heaves through subtropical mountains, passing peasant hamlets and an old Communist-era town. The steam train is a sight from another era, and so is the entire area: old Communist murals still survive on facades of public buildings, the old administrative buildings are built in Soviet neoclassical style, the industrial tenements are dense and forbidden, the market is quaint and exotic, and old people while away the time playing mahjong in the public teahouse or dancing in twirls in the square. Blacksmiths continue to make spare parts for the train the old way, and everything is manually operated. But taking good pictures of the train is challenging: you have to be at the right place and the right time and be ready for the train. Here we will take pictures of various things: architectural shots of the historical buildings, panning shots of the train, panoramas of the town and train from a vantage point, town-life at the market and around the towns, the old defunct coal mines, the blacksmiths working with red hot metal in their cluttered workshops, and so on.

Baima

Living in a scatter of villages in one vast valley, the Baima minority are among the smallest ethnic enclave in the world, numbering just 3,000 individuals. They are a subgroup of Tibetans, and practice a hybrid of Animism and Buddhism. Their wooden houses are ornate with carvings and colourful mythological figures, as well as talismans. They wear a highly distinct costume of bright-coloured clothes and white head-dresses in which a single white feather is attached. It’s a great place for pictures of an exotic ethnicity, with their costumes as dazzling as peacocks, and the mythical symbols on the houses highly evocative.

Baoen Temple

The Baoen Temple, almost 600 years old, used to be called the hidden city due its location in the mountains away from hubs of civilisation. It is full of ancient artistic treasures such as unique Buddhist frescoes that cover the walls of the main temple hall, a statue of Guanyin that has 1000 hands, a cluster of stone statues, a duo of wood-carved flying dragons, and stone carvings partly embedded into the walls. Here we will learn more about taking pictures of historical monuments, especially the techniques involved to enliven static pictures by clever composition that suggests mood, creates continuity by what lies outside the frame, and fires the imagination in a way you would have never thought possible.  

Start & Finish: Chengdu

Duration: 14 days

Trekking: 3 days

Difficulty Level: Treks are relatively easy, walking between 5 and 7 hours on each of the three days we will trek. During treks we will have porters and local guides and cooks, and travellers only need to carry their photography equipment. No special fitness or trekking experience is required of travellers. 

Prices: Highest-end prices start from RMB21,000 (€2,150 or US$3,000) total per person for two travellers, RMB17,000 (€1,750 or US$3,000) each for three travellers, and then continue to fall thereafter depending on the size of the group. Maximum size of group is 10 participants. The price is all-inclusive; we even provide snacks and water for free, and the only things that aren’t covered are incidental personal expenses such as shopping and extra drinks.
Accommodation: Three-star hotels on seven nights; guesthouses on four nights; camping on two nights.

Crew: You will be accompanied during the trip by the photography instructor, coordinator, driver, and a complement of local guide, porters and cook during the three days trekking. 

Dynamic Prices & Flexible Arrangements: If you are travelling in your own private group, there is leeway in travel arrangements according to the participants’ budget and preferences. You can either upgrade the services – for example, opting for higher scale hotels, even having your own cook travel with you, and so on – or downgrade the service by staying in cheaper hotels and having a minimal number of personnel. Through these choices, you can alter the tour according to your taste and budget. To discuss specific arrangements, and commensurate price, please write to us; you can read more about this policy at Dynamic Pricing. 

Detailed Info: For any questions or more details about this tour, please write to us.

Terms & Conditions: For the general terms and conditions that govern our tours and operation, and Frequently Asked Questions, please go to Nitty Gritty (FAQs).

Tours Plus: Would you like to see some other sights in China, before or after you travel with us? Perhaps you would like to visit the famous attractions of Xi’an such as the terracotta warriors? Xi’an is within the orbit of western China, only a short hop away on inexpensive domestic flights from the places where we operate. You can visit Xi’an independently, and we can help you with recommendation – places to stay and eat, getting there and getting around, sights you shouldn’t miss, and so on. If you book one of our tours and would like advice about other places you would like to travel independently in China, such as Xi’an, we can give you free advice.