Intimate Journey – Cuzco – Peru

The legendary city of Cuzco - up in the Peruvian Andes - famous for its strong indigenous culture will be the source of inspiration of this new workshop that I will be teaching in October.

The course will start on the 2ndt of October in Cuzco. We will be staying there for the first seven days taking pictures of daily life in this beautiful city and some of the outlying villages. During this workshop you will have a distinctive feeling of having stepped back into a past century.

All participants are advised to arrive to Lima at least one day before the workshop begins (October 1st) to get some needed rest and acclimate yourself before catching the plane to Cuzco early the next morning.

Our first meeting will take place the day before the workshop begins in the hall of the hotel in Lima where we will be staying the last three night upon our return from Cuzco. If you wish, I can make a reservation for this additional night in Lima for you.

We will be flying out of Lima to go to Cuzco in the early morning on the 2nd of October. Once there, you will have several hours to drink some mate to adjust to the altitude and to prepare for our first meeting in the hostal where we will be staying.

On the 9th of October we will fly back to Lima on of the first flight. You should plan to return to the US from Lima on the 12th of October.

Each morning, (alone or in small groups) we’ll go out shooting on the streets of this fascinating town. Some other days, we will visit, by taking taxi collectivos or busses, some outlying villages and the farmers’ communities in the Urubamba valley such as Ollantaytambo, Pisaq, Urubamba, Maras (famous for its saltpans)).

We will have the opportunity to photograph and share the villagers’ daily life.

During these seven days in Cuzco, we will primarily concentrate in seeking out the essence of daily life in its myriad nuances. With the same enthusiasm and honesty, I will help all of you capture some of those little surprises that photography constantly reveals to us.

On a daily basis, we will walk together around the corners of this palpitating city; we will photograph the flow of life unfolding before our very eyes in Cuzco and in the small pueblos full of mystery and magic. During the workshop I will show you my work from Cuba and Latin America and we will have the opportunity to analyze and critically discuss it.

We will also find time to enjoy the music, the culture and the charm of this precious colonial town.

After the first five days of shooting, all the film will be shipped by plane to Lima where the color and b&w custom labs will be processing it. Most of the rolls will be ready to be edited by the time we arrive in Lima.

In the three final days, we will devote ourselves to editing, critiquing and selecting the best images taken by each student.

Every day, we will have both one-on-one editing sessions and group meetings in which the whole class will discuss many photography topics such as framing, composition and content within the context of individual images.

At the end of the workshop, we will choose the best images of each student. With your permission, two images by each participant will be selected to be included on students’ gallery section in my web page.

For those of you that have already had the opportunity to take a workshop with me, I'll only add that you are in for another great learning experience, as we’ll be sharing both photography and life.

As in all the other workshops I teach, my ultimate goal is to help each participant create an appealing body of work with personal strong individual images. Each student will be encouraged to develop his or her own photographic language and to search for the invisible thread that ties a story together. I’ll help you to improve your ability to see and create new photographs, and to discover your hidden potential. It will definitely be a valuable educational experience where I’ll teach you to develop the skills to look at your own work more critically, and also to appreciate and discuss yours and other people’s work by learning a new visual vocabulary. Our final objective is to produce a series of revealing, lasting images that will display a sense of the place and of its people. You will return home with a new commitment to your work and your creativity.

Travel to Cuzco from the US
From many US cities there are several American air carriers flying into Lima, Peru’s capital. Please check with your travel agent and start making reservations ahead of time to secure availability and a good fare.

Film
The best film to bring is traditional B&W film Kodak Tri-x, Ilford HP5 or Fuji Neopan 1600 asa for low light situations. For color enthusiasts I advise color negative film by Kodak or Fuji with C41 processing. All digital cameras are welcome.

Refund Policy
I rely on your attendance to organize many of the workshops’ logistics, so if for any reason you decide to no longer attend the workshop, please notify me at least 60 days before the start of the workshop. At that time I will refund your deposit less a $200 cancellation fee. If you cancel between 30 and 60 days before the start of the workshop I will retain $600 dollars of your workshop fee. If notification is made less than 30 days before the start of the workshop no monies will be refunded to you.

Please note that in case of exceptional and unforeseeable circumstances such as hurricanes, earthquakes, major floods, tsunami, a war or governments' change of policies in the countries I teach courses, BazanPhotos will only offer as a refund a new workshop in any of the other venues during that same calendar year. No other forms of refunds will be available.

For further information on the workshops and the cost of the 10-day workshop please write to workshops@bazanphotos.com or ernesto_bazan@hotmail.com