What you need to know about organised photography trips.
You love to travel and photograph as you go, but maybe you’re always slightly disappointed with what you capture of the destinations you visit. A workshop in your own country, however much you can learn, can be hard to translate while you’re traveling. So maybe an organised photography trip is for you? In october of 2025 I went on one of these organised photography trips, in this blog you’ll read more about this experience and tips for deciding if it fits your wishes and needs.
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What to be aware of
When deciding if a photography trip is for you, there’s a few things you should know beforehand; I’ve listed them down below.
The price
It is no lie, photography trips will be more expensive than any other group trip. This has to do with the fact that a professional photography joins this trip as your teacher. The costs of the teacher’s hours as well as their accomodation is added (and split) between the travelers. A normal group trip will not have this aspect, however you will also not be taught or be given the time and opportunity to take all the photo’s you want. This is what makes it worth its higher price tag.
It’s still group travel
You will be traveling in a group + a professional photographer (the teacher). Though these groups are usually fairly small, it remains a group you’ll be spending the entirety of a trip with. Though you go into the trip knowing you have a shared passion for photography (and travel) and stories of both will be shared over breakfast, if you get overwhelmed quick or value alone time like no one else; a group trip might not be for you.
Photo’s taken by our guide at Sekala Lodge, Welgevonden
It will be intense
Photography trips are usually not longer than 2 weeks, and that’s for a reason. With sunrise & sunset being the ideal lighting conditions to photograph you’ll be waking up early and going to bed late. Now when you travel by yourself you can decide to take a nap midday but with these group trips you often have a afternoon-program that consists of selecting, editing and talking about your photos with your teacher. Therefore a trip like this will be intense. Do note that the intensity can vary per trip. A safari trip may be more intense than a city-trip for example.
Activity level of the trip
Aside from the intensity of long days and short nights, depending on the trip you may need to be in good shape physically. A trip centred around landscape photography may require hiking tougher terrain, a trip to a beautiful city may require a lot of walking around cobblestone streets while on a safari trip you’ll be sitting a lot in a car.
The program for an organised trip and what level of physical intensity it requires can usually be found on the website.
Required level of photography
Let me start by saying that you do not need to be a professional or very experienced photographer to go on these trips. There’s something to learn for everyone. However most organisers will require some skill, for example, that you know the photography basics or how to shoot in manual mode. This rule stands so that you can focus on learning the more specialised skills that are talked about on the trip instead of always having to go back to the basics. It also ensures that the trip will be fun for both the less and more experienced photographers.
What you will learn
What you will learn specifically will depend on the kind of trip you decide to go on. In general you will learn about different techniques to use with the main photography focus of the trip, composition & editing will also be a talking point. Here’s a rough overview of the type of trips often offered and what the focus will be on.
City trip: Cityscapes, architecture & portrait/street photography
Examples of destinations: Sevilla, Marrakech & New York
Nature trip: Landscape & possibly macrophotography
Examples of desitinations: Iceland, Scotland & Norway
Wildlife trip: Wildlife photography
Examples of destinations: South Africa, Tanzania & Romania
There are also trips that will offer a combination of these categories, I like to call these the ‘true’ travel photography trips. These trips often go to culturally very rich countries like China & Namibia. The focus of these trips are to capture the story of the country with both it’s beautiful nature & its vibrant cities or culture.
My experience
The trip I joined was to the Welgevonden Private Game Reserve in South Africa with De Rooij Fotografie, a dutch company mainly catering to a Dutch and Belgian audience right now. We were only a small group of 8 people + the teacher which was a great experience because there was truly time for everyone without it feeling like everything had to happen really fast. This trip’s focus was wildllife photography and since animals are active early in the morning our alarm went off a 4:30 so we could drive off at 5:00. Those wake-up times combined with the late dinners and therefore fairly late nights is why I’m glad that this trip was only a week long, any longer and I think my body would have suffered. Because despite the trip not being physically intense, the hours were.
But it was so very worth it! I took some of my favourite wildlife photos ever and learned a lot in terms of editing & fun techniques I otherwise would never have thought of.
Conclusion
Whether a photography trip is for you or not, I can’t tell you that. But hopefully this blog has given you a bit more clarity on what you can expect so that you may make your decision. Whichever way you decide to travel & photograph: happy photographing!
