Tours

Camera Treks

Our tours and workshops are in-the-field experiences exploring the visual richness of the planet; journeys tailored for you, the photographer. If you possess a keen desire to refine and hone your skills in capturing content, crafting a story-line, and developing a style – all in the beautiful and engaging environs of Cuba, Mongolia, Venice, Barcelona, Scotland, Santa Fe, Upper Mustang, Papua New Guinea and East & Southern Africa, our trips are for you! Bring gear suited to the classic image-making activity in which we engage: travel and street photography/ portraiture, documentary work, landscape and neolithic monuments.

Our Tours are small affairs for 6 photographers and most are accomplished without the frills and gussied up accouterments many tours seem to have moved toward. (If a no-expense-spared trip is what you are after, our excursions are probably not for you.) We are committed to responsible, low-impact travel and concentrate on authentic cultural immersion in some of the last wild, peopled places on planet earth – while they still exist.

We recognize today's photographer has myriad choices when it comes to choosing and joining a tour. We would be pleased if you would join us on one of ours!

Effort - Not Perfection

Mindfullness / Be Here Now

Just as Buddhism attempts to get one to live in the present, with a generous heart, mindful of the now, we boost your visual story-telling by helping you focus on the image in front of you at any given moment. The knack is to create the best, most engaging and captivating photograph you can with this one chance – right now!

Digital imaging and zoom lenses often obscure this idea, submerging it deep below the level of conscious thinking. With our ability to freely churn through hundreds of images we forget that it is this one picture right now, there before us, that is the most important image we will ever make – at least until we approach the next shot!

In photography, the path we choose may include a goal, but the goal is not the end, it is simply a signpost toward which we move. Reality suggests there is no end, there is simply the journey. Taking this journey we improve our mental and physical discipline – our eye and heart, our hand and good posture, to discover personal rhythms and our own sources of photographic power.

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Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. – Theodore Isaac Rubin

Covid-19 Notice

With the spread of Covid-19, Camera Treks has had to cancel all trips in 2020, 2021 and the first half of 2022. We are resuming operations in October 2022 with a trip to Neolithic sites in Scotland (the Orkney Islands and Outer Hebrides) and Ireland's Bru na Boinne complex. Mid-November may see a trip to Borneo for photographing orangutan.

NOTE: Our July trip to East New Britain and New Ireland, PNG was cancelled as the dance grounds have been sold to make way for a Civic Center. The November Canoe & Drum Festival in MiIne Bay, PNG (that includes an additional 10 days sailing amongst island communities accessible only by boat) has also been cancelled because our luxury yacht re-fit is not likely to be completed on time.

Acknowledging that, into the foreseeable future, there is no 100% safe travel we will engage in COVID-19 mitigation protocols appropriate and legally required for each locale until the World Health Organization deems such procedures unnecessary.

With the above in mind, we will now require, in addition to the requirements we have always had (medical insurance, med-e-vac insurance, etc.):

- Proof of a full course of Covid-19 vaccinations in the form of a copy of your Centers for Disease Control (CDC) or country-appropriate vaccination card. This applies to all leaders and Camera Treks staff as well as participants;

- Face masks (when indoors, in vehicles and when less than 6 feet of separation between us is impossible) are required for all participants, guides, porters, and staff on our trips. This requirement may change as Covid conditions change in areas of our travel;

- A PCR COVID-19 test may be required for international air travel. Regulations for such tests are in a constant state of flux and differ with each airline so we will 'go with the flow' on this as required;

- Participants ought to bring a small bottle of hand sanitizer for their use during the tour. Do not forget that bottles with more than 3 fluid ounces are not allowed in your flight carry-on;

- Each participant will be required to sign a Medical Waver acknowledging an understanding of the medical and physical risks in their/our travel.

Camera Treks will send out Covid information update(s) before each trip and we will encourage group discussion about the requirements and what steps we will take if one of our number begins to exhibit signs of a Covid infection.

We will permit each participant to decide whether they wish to partake of their restaurant/group meals in their rooms or at our group tables. In either case we will adhere to the rules in place at each location.

On our tours we have always encouraged participants to switch the vehicle they are riding in throughout the trip in order to better get to know everyone on the trip. We will change this to each participant staying in the same vehicle with the same companions for the duration of the trip if Covid becomes an issue on any particular tour.

The rules and regulations pertaining to Covid change and we will, similarly, need to amend our requirements to stay in compliance. Major changes to our requirements before tours begin will be sent out via email. Changes during tours will be discussed with everyone in-person.

Participant Interviews

If we have never met Camera Treks requires at least one in-person interview with each person who wishes to join a tour. No exceptions. Just as with our trips, we seek a good, hassle-free experience for these fairly informal interviews and if in-person is not feasible we use Skype, What’s App, Signal, Zoom or some other service. Variables like server traffic, internet provider speeds, and both your and our hardware can contribute to issues during interviews. As well, the Internet can throw unforeseen obstacles into the mix. We do try to minimize these annoying problems.

CameraTreks.com

Field Workshops for Photographers / By Photographers