It is winter and time to start dreaming of the summer, where to go and what kind of a vacation to choose.  Why not something different like a photography tour in Sri Lanka?  Europe is a popular option for the summer but so crowded, and if you are interested in photography you will be confronted with loads of tourists trying to take the same happy snaps which will make it very difficult to take some original pictures without unwanted people in them.

Sri Lanka is a great option for several reasons.  Firstly, it is a stunning island offering a diversity that is rare.  It’s history and mixture of different religions and ethnicities mean that there are monuments and relics of extraordinary beauty and diversity.  There are rolling hills covered in tea plantations, national parks and mountains covered with extraordinary fauna and wildlife.  Whilst it rains in one part of Sri Lanka, the sun shines on the other.

For a photographer the scope is endless.  I already wrote 3 blogs on my last trip there, last March.  I meant to organise this workshop earlier but I never got round to it.  For a keen landscape photographer you will be hard put to find so many different landscape and seascape possibilities in one small country.  Those landscapes can be taken alone or peppered with local people, monks, fisherman, school children, tea pickers etc.   Dawn and dusk are stupendous, and the mountains in August make for misty scenes with leaves weighed down by rain, which can make for superb photographs in strong contrast to the rest of the country.

The Sri Lankan people are charming and friendly so those more interested in street photography and portraits will find it easy to capture the local population, after asking them first of course.  What I found so interesting was that everywhere I went I found that the majority of tourists were from India and Sri Lanka, enchanted like us with all they saw and eager to be photographed.

I am working on the itinerary for the Photography Tour now.  For comfort and ease of photography we will travel across the country by air-conditioned minivan with an experienced driver. We will visit the ancient sites of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Sigiriya and Dambulla.  We will visit the National Park of Minneriya to photograph the elephants.  We will go to Kandy, then up in the hills to the tea plantations and visit Nuwara Eliya.  From there we will take a fantastic train ride through the mountains to Ella before continuing our journey south by minivan to the beautiful picturesque town of Galle.  From Galle we will make our way back to Colombo by train, allowing for more incredible photographs before terminating the tour in Colombo. 

I will be giving photo instruction throughout and each participant will have a particular project to work on.  The itinerary will be quite intense as the idea is for us to be in the right place at the right time for the light as often as possible, but I do realise that it is a holiday so it will be fun and there will be time to relax and unwind.

For years due to the civil war that tore the country apart, tourists ceased to visit Sri Lanka, but now it is blossoming again and is still unspoilt enough to enjoy.  Take a few days before or after the photography tour and lie on a deserted beach, take another safari or visit other places not on the agenda such as Jaffna in the north.   It is an enchanting island and a spectacular destination for the photographer. 

Anyone who may be interested in this upcoming tour can contact me immediately on info@annasphototraveltours.com and I will be happy to discuss this with you.