Tours/Workshops/Whatever they are called

[Paddy]

Questions-----

If any of you were to go or think of going on a photo tour, what would you want or prefer.

Would you want to visit as many photographic sites chosen by a local guide as possible during that tour? ( in otherwords go home with as many good pics as possible )

Would you want to pay more and have some kind of an award winning or qualified photographer fly over with you to take you around and give instruction? ( in otherwords a photographic workshop )

Obviously in theory perhaps one should be more expensive than the other, but say would you prefer your money to be spent on you or would you prefer to pay for tutorial? during the time in question.

Purely fact finding thats all as i appreciate most here know their stuff but please any of you reply with your thoughts.

Thankyou

[John Kasaian]

I'd pack up the truck with the 'dorff, a cooler of lah-mah-joons, some camping equipment, a credit card and hit the highway. I don't want to know too much about where I'm headed or be too caught up in a schedule. If I miss something then I've got a good excuse to return some other time.

In big cities, I'll get up before sunrise and roam around between Starbucks with the Speed Graphic as the sky starts turning steel gray (My Speeder has a cup holder attached ! )

[Brian Ellis]

I've done many workshops but only two photo tours. One was the John Sexton/Ray McSavaney Southwest - A Sense of Place workshop (it's called a workshop because there's some instruction and portfolio critiques but it's basically a tour of Canyon de Chelly and several other great places). The other was Ron Rosenstock's Ireland tour. Both were for LF photographers, both were excellent. I don't think I'd go on a photo tour with a LF camera unless the person conducting the tour was oriented towards LF.

[Mark Sawyer]

If spending the day with a tutor/mentor/guru, I'd hate to waste it photographing. I'd much rather spend the day drinking coffee early/red wine late, talking and looking at prints...

And my most productive photo tours lately have been through my own backyard...

I think I'm setting a bad example...

[Paddy]

OK suppose the schedule was sourced before hand ( as much as possible ) by the people who are going on the tour, and the tour is kept to a small amount of people say no more than 6 people as that lessens the amount of messing about.

Is your Tutorial money better spent at or on a Schooling course than a photographic workshop????

And Brian, what if the uninstructed photo tour took you to the same places and more that your instructed photo tour did, and ended up a lot cheaper but with more of your money spent on you other than paying for your instructor to travel.?

Are you saying you needed the instructor so that you could take your pics??

A tour where we can sit around looking at pics talking and drink wine all day----Book me on that one !!!

[Ed Richards]

> Would you want to visit as many photographic sites chosen by a local guide as possible during that tour? ( in otherwords go home with as many good pics as possible )

One could also argue that spending the entire time in one spot would be the best way to assure as many good pics as possible. If you are shooting locations for stock, the tour sounds good, but do folks really come back with a lot of good fine art shots from drive by shooting?

[Ole Tjugen]

That depends entirely on the location.

When I arranged the "gathering" here in Norway, I decided that simply dropping a lot of LF photographers in the middle of some stunning scenery would give everyone some pictures, a chance to chat and compare equipment, and hopefully also to learn from each other. It was also the easiest arrangement for me, although I did have a contingency plan in case of bad weather...

[Ed Richards]

> although I did have a contingency plan in case of bad weather...

Did that involve the photography of quaint pub interiors?

[Ole Tjugen]

Did that involve the photography of quaint pub interiors?

Unfortunately not, as "quaint pubs" are rather thin on the ground in that region. It involver rather a lot of talking by me, and a demonstration of a few different alternative printing methods using a greenhouse growlamp. And lots of beer to make the ordeal survivable.

[Brian Ellis]

"And Brian, what if the uninstructed photo tour took you to the same places and more that your instructed photo tour did, and ended up a lot cheaper but with more of your money spent on you other than paying for your instructor to travel.?

Are you saying you needed the instructor so that you could take your pics??"

I've never been on a photography "tour" where I was just paying an instructor to travel. The two "tours" (as opposed to the dozen or so workshops) I've been on involved many things other than simply paying an instructor to travel. For example, with Ron Rosenstock's Ireland tour Ron met us at the airport, did all the driving for 10 days, selected locations based on his 30+ years of part-time residency and personal photography in Ireland, put us up in his lovely 8 bedroom home, and his gourmet cook provided us with breakfast and dinner. Sure, I probably could have bought my own airline ticket, rented a car, figured out what hotels to stay at and what restaurants to eat at, and wasted tons of time driving all over the place trying to figure out where to photograph. That woud have saved some money but I was there to photograph, not to be my own travel agent, so I was happy to let Ron do most of the work while I concentrated on photography.

In the case of the John Sexton/Ray McSavaney "tour" of parts of the southwest, I was paying for some instruction and a portfolio critique but mostly for John and Ray's knowledge of places to photograph, plus making all the arrangements to get there.
Photography based workshops and tours come in all kinds of shapes and forms.

I've never had any interest in the tours that I've seen advertised in photography magazines such as "Shutterbug" or "Popular Photography" if that's what you have in mind when you talk about "instructed tours." My feeling has been that I'd end up with a bunch of people many of whom just wanted a vacation with a little photography thrown in and/or who knew little about photography so that I wouldn't benefit from whatever instruction was involved. Every workshop and tour I've been on that comes to mind has been oriented towards large format photography. With those kind I feel like I'll be with other people who aren't totally ignorant of photography and who are there mainly for the photography, not just for a vacation.