The Best Photo Tours for 2018

Harry Fisch

THE BEST PHOTO TOURS FOR 2018

If you’re a travel photographer, no doubt you want to find photo tours that will give you access to authentic experiences, real people, and a chance to go to the most interesting and culturally spectacular places on earth. Well, if you have to make a shortlist for 2018, let this be it.

 And in a lot of areas in the world the answer is probably yes.

ETHIOPIA

 Specifically in January during Timket, or the Feast of Epiphany, in the nearly deserted town of Lalibela. This is a trip you absolutely cannot miss. Lalibela is known as African Jerusalem and is home to several thousand year old churches that are actually build straight into the ground. The festival is a somber, candle lit affair with lines of devoted faithful in white, coming up the mountain like a line of ghosts in the pre dawn light. It’s ethereal and unlike anything anywhere else in the world.

HAVANA

Havana in particular is one of the most exciting and photogenic cities in the world. Peppered with fin tailed Cadillacs and art deco buildings all along the seaside promenade, it’s also home to a warm and amiable people, excellent photographic opportunities in gritty 50’s style boxing gyms, and the flash of flaring dresses in the salsa clubs. It’s one of Nomad Photo Expedition’s best selling photo tours for a reason; the amount of variety you can get here in terms of people photography, from old men in panama hats to some of the world’s best boxers, to voodoo priests who will let you in on their rituals, is astounding. People photographers can’t miss this one.

SOUTH CHINA

Southern China is an absolute cultural and ecological treasure hoard. A good photo tour to China will take you down south to visit the myriad of tribes that live there. There are several dozen of them, all with their own specific cultures and ways; subjects will vary from monks to craftsman to farmers, all locals, all real. This place is too remote to be bothered putting on a show for tourists, so you know that as soon as you see the rising green steppes of the Longji rice terraces, you’re in uncharted country for the tourism industry. Nomad Photo Expeditions offers a photo tour that ends with the cormorant fishermen of Guilin, who use their magnificent birds in the art of sunrise fishing that is in perfect natural harmony. It’s one of the most peace and awe inspiring photographic opportunities you can have.

VARANASI

India is about getting slightly out of your comfort zone, and Varanasi will provide that. A tourist friendly area it might be, but there’s plenty of the true India to be found there if you get on the right photo tour. If you’re willing to get away from all of the normal hubbub and get up before dawn you’ll get a wonderful tableau for your camera; cows drifting, priests in their long boats, lanterns high coming down the river in the blue hours, and devotees coming just as the sun rises to bathe in the holy river. It isn’t easy to get a good photo tour here, but absolutely, solidly a must do if you can find one that will afford you the time and access you need.

MONGOLIA. NAADAM FESTIVAL

This is our surprise option, but there’s good reason to make sure you get to Mongolia as a travel photographer. There are two incredible festivals here, Naadam, which is almost a tiny, Mongolian Olympics with athletes, archers, riders, and military bands competing across the country, but also the Eagle Festival. Even in the furthers and most remote villages this is a highlight for the whole nation, and will grant you the opportunity to photograph real live eagle trainers and competitors in action with their great and wheeling raptors. It might mean a night out in the hills staying with the locals in the ger camps, but if that isn’t a great recipe for candid portrait work, we don’t know what is.

Please visit our photo tours schedule If you are interested in one our Best Photo Tours for 2018