PhotoZoomCuba offers photography enthusiasts of all skill levels to enrich their creative talent while exploring the life, landscapes, architecture, customs and cultures of this fascinating Caribbean island, Cuba.

Our various proposals include:

• Workshop
• Workshop and Tour
• Workshop, Art Appreciation and Street Photography
• Jewels of Historical Cuba
• Landscape and Nature
• Cuba’s Historical Villas
• Rumba in Santiago
• And a special Year-End offer

At every moment, participants are accompanied by a photography assistant and expert guide. Our working languages are English and Spanish.

PhotoZoomCuba Workshop

Four days in Havana for aspiring creative documentary photographers.

Our philosophy is that photography as an art form is nourished by Art in general, learning its laws and enjoying its exuberance and freedom.

See, Shoot, Save, Show

Our theoretical and practical Workshop activities span the whole spectrum of the creative photographic experience from training the eye and brain to “see”, understanding better the eye/finger/camera relationship at the moment of “capture”, basic post-capture editing and efficient archiving, and how best to prepare the photo-file for printing and web-posting. We also show ways by which to create empathy between the photographer and their subjects during portrait, street and social adventures.

Our four -day Workshop in Havana, conducted by our team of instructors, is divided between morning sessions, from 10 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. held in Havana’s residential area while the afternoons, from 3.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. are dedicated to Walks in the city centre, camera in hand, guided by an instructor.

Evenings are not planned, but our organiser will be ready to help you decide how to spend them.

Accommodation will either be in a modern four- or five-star hotel or a selected B & B hostel all within ten-minutes walking distance of our Workshop. The choice is yours. Other than breakfast, meals are not included in our Workshop offer but may be arranged by our organiser if required.

For information about Havana please access Destinations.

PhotoZoomCuba “Workshop/Tour” package

After the initial four-day Workshop stage, we set off on a six-day Tour which takes us to carefully selected locations in the provinces offering a variety of photographic opportunities ranging from landscapes, architecture, nature and urban environments.

Workshop, Art Appreciation and Street Photography package

Havana is not only the capital of Cuba, it is also acknowledged as one of the capitals of Latin American art and popular cultures. Home to one of the world’s most prestigious ballet companies, a distinguished Arts University, museums, galleries, music venues and festivals, Havana is a hive of artistic creativity to be enjoyed and photographed. In line with our conviction that Art in all its forms is the soul of good photography, PhotoZoomCuba offers photography enthusiasts a two-week package of Workshop sessions enhanced by daily visits to whatever is happening at the moment plus walks around the city centre focusing on how Cubans behave outside their homes. Two sides of the same coin! Galleries, artists’ studios, craftsmen’s workshops, ballet, art and music schools, concerts, jazz clubs, rhumba venues, busy backstreets, queues, crowds, romantic plazas…. twelve days as varied and bubbling as a maharaja’s nuptial banquet! And the cherry? The option of a last-night dinner and show at one of the world’s most fabulous cabarets, Havana’s famous Tropicana.

To rest up and freshen our minds, the mid-program weekend will be passed in the peaceful, luxuriant hills of the Sierra del Rosario, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

PhotoZoomCuba “Landscape and Nature Tour”

Following a day in Havana’s fascinating Old Town, we begin an adventurous seven-day trip enjoying and photographing the diverse landscapes and rich fauna and flora of three UNESCO-protected nature reserves in western Cuba. Apart from tours with specialist forestry guides, the experience will include a visit to Cuba’s largest cave system and snorkelling or scuba diving in one of the world’s highest-rated diving centres.

PhotoZoomCuba “Jewels of Historical Cuba” photo tour

PhotoZoomCuba “Jewels of Historical Cuba” is a seven-day tour offering the photographer the most significant examples of five centuries of colonial and post-colonial Cuban architecture throughout Western Cuba. In each city you will be accompanied by a local expert in the matter.

As an option, guests may participate in the initial Workshop stage

PhotoZoomCuba “Cuba’s Villas” photo tour

On the 12^th of October 1492, Christopher Columbus first touched the north-eastern coast of what was to become named Cuba. After two months of cruising further east, he set foot in a bay which he named Baracoa where he planted the Spanish flag and a wooden cross, the first Christian symbol in the New World. In 1511, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar arrived in Baracoa where he established his headquarters from where to set off to accomplish his mission of conquering the island, subduing and enslaving the natives, establishing Spanish settlements and searching for gold. For two years, he and his men travelled almost the whole length of the island founding Villas on the way: Baracoa, Bayamo, Trinidad, Remedios, Sancti Spíritus, Camagüey, Havana and lastly Santiago where he established his residence as Cuba´s first Governor.

Our nine-day tour begins where Columbus presumably first landed and met the native Taino people, and then we pace up through the island following Velasquez’s footsteps, pointing our cameras at the most significant monuments and remains of those times and the different personalities each Villa shows today. Our group will be accompanied by expert local guides and we guarantee every evening we shall enjoy the very best in local gastronomy and entertainment.

PhotoZoomCuba “Rumba in Santiago”

For music-loving photographers we suggest considering one or other of the fabulous, exotic, exciting and exhausting festivals in Santiago de Cuba; the Fire Festival between the 28^th of June and the 5^th of July and the Carnival between the 18^th and 27^th of July.

The Fire Festival is undoubtedly the most important festival of West Indian, Africa-derived cultures when folkloric groups and artists of many of the Caribbean islands meet, mix and perform, mostly in public places. A week of drumming and dancing to a swaying cacophony of rhythms and colours (and beer!) from mid-afternoon to well past midnight.

In Cuba, Carnival is held traditionally at the end of the sugar-cane harvest, and no better place to celebrate it than in Santiago de Cuba. Majestic, colourful floats, schools of dancers and traditional musicians, here is where the conga, son and rumba were born and became one of the world’s most powerful musical influences, recently nominated by UNESCO as Non-Material Patrimony of Humanity. Once again, exotic, exciting and exhausting, leaving hardly enough time to recharge camera batteries and download memory cards!

One warning, however…. If you suffer from the heat and crowds and object to having to grab food on the run, this is not for you.

Dates and programs have yet to be defined by the organisers, but please let us know if you would be interested.

PhotoZoomCuba “Jewels of Historical Architecture”, special year-end proposal.

For Christmas and Year End, we offer an exclusive proposal to photographers attracted to architecture and urban environments and who would also like to see how Cubans enjoy these festivities and to take part in them. Apart from photographing the most important examples of colonial and post-colonial architecture in the five principal cities of western Cuba, on Christmas Eve we shall mix with the jubilant crowds during the literally explosive Parranda of Remedios, and, a week later, welcome the New Year in the heart of Havana, we shall also squeeze in a day of stretch out and splash on one of the Caribbean’s most delightful beaches on Cayo Santa Maria.