Cambodia Ancient Temples Photo workshop is up
- Adam Monk
- Dec 30, 2014
- 2 min read
Its taken longer than expected to arrange and finalise, but my Cambodia Ancient Temples Photo Workshop is finally up and ready for booking. I’ve totally re-engineered the workshop this year, so it’s completely different to last years Vietnam and Cambodia Tour. I found trying to see all of Vietnam and Cambodia in two weeks was too much and we couldn’t spend enough time in any location. Plus there was lots of flying and changing hotels which eats up valuable time and is very tiring. So this year I’ve focused (excuse the pun) on the part of last years tour that was my favourite, the few days we spent in Siem Reap and the Angkor ruins in Cambodia.
Angkor Temple Complex.
On last year’s tour we only spent a few days in this amazing place, and I found it was not enough. So much so that after the completion of the tour I returned by myself to spend another two full weeks exploring Siem Reap and particularly the Angkor Temple complex and I loved it! Angkor is over 400 square kilometres of ancient cities and temples buried under the jungles of tropical Cambodia and is the most amazing lost city I have ever seen. I love ancient ruins and lost civilisations and I have explored quite a few, from the jungles of Central and South America, and the desert plains of the Maya in Mexico to ancient Roman, Greek and Byzantine ruins in Europe. Angkor beats them all!
Avoiding the Siem Reap Shopping Mall experience
As with many amazing places, Angkor gets lots of tourism, in fact the archaeological site of Angkor, especially the most famous temple Angkor Wat sees more than 2 Million visitors each year… What this means is, if you are there at the wrong times, rather than being a profoundly awesome experience, it can be like a giant shopping mall in the post Christmas sales. I spent my last 2 weeks in Siem Reap researching the best times to be in each location, the times when the light was right and the crowds were somewhere else! I also hooked up with Dave Perkes, a UK photographer who has lived in Siem Reap for 12 years and specialises in small group photographic tours of Angkor and the jungle region and communities around Siem Reap. Together Dave and I have put together a one week itinerary of photographing the best of Angkor and the Siem Reap region in the best light without the shopping mall effect. Between us we know all the back ways into the best spots and the locations that few people visit.
Tomb Raider
Angkor is the original Tomb Raider location, many of the temples were actually used as sets for the series of films. But that amazing sense of discovery and wonder at jungle covered temples is lost if you arrive there with a huge tour group all in pink T Shirts (so they know which group they belong to…) with a mega phone wielding guide shouting instructions… don’t laugh, thats what it can be like. Not on this workshop. We have a small group of 10, no pink T shirts, no mega phones and the knowledge and experience to avoid the times when the pink T shirted groups are around.
Photo Workshop, Not Holiday
This workshop won’t be a holiday, it’s about getting up very early and getting the best shots of this incredible place. We stay in a very nice 4 star resort style hotel for the duration of the workshop (with a pool), and there will be lots of photography workshops in the hotel conference room during the heat of the day, before heading out again in the late afternoon to more great locations when the crowds have gone home with heat exhaustion.
If this sounds interesting you can read all the details on the Cambodia Ancient Temples Photography Workshop Page>> If you have any questions my contact details are also on that page and you can feel free to email or call me.
