Wildlife Photography - in the Spanish Pyrenees

The scenery of the Spanish Pyrenees has a pleasing grandeur and provides a setting that attracts many visitors each year, but, with photography as our focus on this 8-day holiday to rural Aragón we’ll view the region’s stunning cliffs, canyons and limestone erosions with a more artistic eye than the general tourist. Aimed at beginners and intermediates, you will have a chance to hone your wildlife and landscape photography skills in a beautiful and unspoilt setting, with breathtaking Pyrenean scenery as a backdrop to your shots. The comfortable base for our activities is a delightful 300-year-old property situated in the pretty hilltop village of Berdún which enjoys fine views of the Pyrenees, surrounding foothills, and valleys of the Veral and Aragón Rivers. Our friendly hosts will make us most welcome, keeping us well fed on local cuisine, while our tutor will be experienced local photographer Sergio Padura. Sergio fine-tuned his artistic appreciation with a B.A. in Art History at the University of Barcelona, as well as completing a 5-year course at the Institute of Photographic Studies of Catalonia. Now based in the Aragonese Pyrenees, he has travelled widely, and works as a professional photographer in a variety of different sectors from architecture to landscape. He has an open, friendly manner and an excellent understanding of how to help people make the most of their potential as a photographer — whatever level they start at. This tour is designed for those who want to learn more about the basics of photography and who also have a keen interest in nature. Advances in technology mean many of us now own digital SLR cameras. If you have become accustomed to setting the dial to ‘AUTO’, and have forgotten or are only dimly aware of such concepts as focal length, aperture and shutter speed, but have the kit and are keen to learn (or remember) how to use it, this holiday offers such an opportunity! Sergio will teach you the basics, and more depending on how fast you progress, then head straight off outside to help you practise your new skills, with the natural beauty of the setting providing the backdrop of scenery, birds, plants and butterflies that will be the subjects of the holiday.

On arrival at our 17th century guesthouse, after a short flight to Zaragoza, we’ll have an introductory slideshow followed by dinner. Each day we’ll make excursions to locations within an hour’s drive for the photography course — to the high Pyrenees and foothills, rounding off each evening with a debrief of the ‘day’s work’ and analysis of everyone’s pictures. We’ll aim to include a few early morning starts to catch the best light, as well as making one evening shoot of the stars. During the week, in the field and back at our guesthouse, Sergio will help you understand your camera and how to achieve the best results from it, starting with finding your way around the camera’s controls and picture composition. Attention will also be paid to depth of field, choice of lens and understanding exposure, as well as editing and printing. The emphasis will be firmly on helping you to look upon your work with a critical but constructive eye and learning to appreciate the effect your choice of camera settings has on the finished print.

During our stay, we will explore the area around Berdún, where the Aragón and Veral Valleys and the spectacular Biniés Gorge are home to an excellent variety of low-level birds and plants. While Lammergeier, Golden Eagle, Bee-eaters, Golden Orioles, Ortolan Buntings and Egyptian Vultures are among the bird species we are likely to see in the area, we’ll tend to focus on photographing rather easier-to-capture subjects such as Rock Sparrows and Griffon Vultures. We will visit the beautiful Hecho Valley, enjoying the displays of flowers and their attendant butterflies, and there is even a chance of the elusive Wallcreeper here though we’ll need some patience to try and photograph one! The photographers who are keen to capture shots of wild flowers in our party will additionally find carpets of gentians and Pyrenean Buttercups in the valley bottom, as well as numerous saxifrages and other rock-dwelling plants on the scree slopes above.

The Pyrenees is an accessibly exotic location offering great scenery, good weather and a wide variety of birds, animals, flowers and insects. Sergio will help you to be ready when that split-second opportunity arises to get a shot of a Lammergeier overhead, but it will most likely be the spectacular scenery and wealth of insects, flowers and birds that linger long in your memory and photographs!