A DREAM CARVED IN STONE

The valley written in shadow

At dawn a Cappadocian valley is not yet rock — it is a set of dark intervals: a cleft, a cave mouth, the gap between two ridges. Photograph the geometry before the geometry has colour. Let the stone propose the frame first, and only then decide where a figure or a trace of habitation belongs inside it.

What the rock lets in

Interiors here receive light only at second hand, through one opening, off one opposite surface. That indirection is the subject, not an obstacle to it: camera position decided with care before any correction in post, because the true architecture of the room is the path the light took to enter it, not the room itself.

The travel diary

Our age hands us machines and calls them memory. They are fast, and the journey is not. The journey asks for the opposite of speed: it asks for pauses, for halts, for the hours when the body rests and the mind catches up with where it has been.

Carry a notebook, and write in it by hand. There are moments on every journey when you find yourself alone, for an instant, before the immensity in front of you. It is then that thoughts arrive which will never come again, and which no screen will keep for you. Fix them on the page, or they scatter into the dust, the sun and the wind of the day, and are lost.

A gift of your own images

Most of the advice I can give you is obvious. Protect your equipment. Keep your socks and shirts away from the dust, because pulling on a clean, fresh shirt is always a pleasure. Any traveller knows these things, and perhaps you know them already. I say them not to teach, but because a teacher leads by example.

But there is one thing I have learned over the years that I do not impose on you: I recommend it, with force. If you wish to build a real relationship with the people you meet, a gesture of tenderness, a gift, is the surest way. Travellers have always carried gifts to the peoples and the strangers who received them. And what is the most precious gift a photographer can give? An image.

My suggestion is simple. Take one of those small photo albums, ten by fifteen, and fill it with the pictures you love most, printed small. Give them to the people you meet along the way. Write on them with a suitable pen: hello, your name, thank you, whatever you wish. The print becomes a personal object, made for that person alone. It costs you nothing, and it is an extraordinarily powerful gesture.

And it will raise you onto another scale as a human being. You will no longer be someone who arrives, takes an image and leaves. You will be someone who gives something back, who leaves a trace of gratitude instead of only carrying one away. The people before your lens feel that difference at once, and they meet you as a person, not as a camera. That is where the finest photographs are born, and something more than photographs: a bond.

A room carved from rock begins with an absence. Yet that absence has height, depth, a threshold and a particular way of receiving the day. In Cappadocia, learning to photograph architecture means learning how to make those relationships visible on a flat surface.

Position before the frame

We will begin with where the camera stands. You will examine how height, distance and alignment change the apparent proportions of a façade or interior. Wide-angle lenses can describe a confined room, but they also enlarge the nearest objects and stretch the space between them. You will learn to recognise that effect before it becomes the unintended subject of the photograph.

We will compare wider and longer views, work carefully with verticals and edges, and consider perspective correction in relation to the original camera position. A convincing architectural image depends on the agreement between these decisions.

Light entering stone

In passages, excavated rooms and churches, daylight may arrive through a single opening. You will learn to expose for the relationship between that brightness and the interior, deciding what must remain legible and what can be held in shadow.

Tripod work will allow deliberate composition and longer exposures. Where the contrast requires it, we will examine exposure bracketing and restrained blending, judging the result by the continuity of the light and the credibility of the space. Focus placement and depth of field will be studied through surfaces at different distances.

The arrival

The arrival night preceding the first working day is offered by London Photographic Workshop. The group will meet in Cappadocia and gather for the welcome dinner, also offered by LPW.

A house within the stone

Accommodation will be selected in a carefully restored cave property in or near Göreme or Uçhisar. The intention is not novelty for its own sake, but continuity: to sleep within the same relationship between carved space, shadow and shelter that the workshop studies photographically.

Position before luxury

The chosen base must allow early access to the valleys, practical transport and quiet recovery after long working days. Character, warmth and a genuine connection to the local architecture matter more than generic luxury.

Cappadocia is reached most conveniently through Kayseri or Nevşehir airports. Participants may share their arrival details with London Photographic Workshop so that collection and transfer options can be coordinated, or receive clear guidance for joining the group independently.

During the workshop, comfortable private road transport will connect the principal valleys, settlements and photographic locations. Daily routes will follow light, weather, site opening conditions and the pace required for careful architectural work.

Some locations involve steps, slopes, uneven rock and short uphill or downhill walks. Underground cities include narrow passages, low ceilings and enclosed spaces; participation in that chapter is never compulsory, and a meaningful surface alternative will be maintained.

Balloon activity depends on wind and aviation decisions and cannot be guaranteed. Access to churches, interiors and protected sites may carry restrictions on tripods, lighting or photography. The final working plan will respect the rules confirmed by each site.

The workshop does not require technical climbing or long hikes. Participants should nevertheless travel with a compact kit and be prepared for cold mornings, strong wind and rapid changes between exterior light and dark interiors.

In Cappadocia, we will travel through light, valleys and landscapes sculpted in rock, with the comfort of VIP vans, such as high-specification Mercedes Sprinters or Vito. Road transfers will bring us closer to our photographic locations where access allows, although some viewpoints and rock-cut sites will still involve walking.

Routes may include uneven ground, steps and uphill and downhill sections: we recommend comfortable footwear with good grip and a carefully chosen kit, leaving you freer to observe. The walking involved will depend on the locations selected and will be detailed in the workshop itinerary. Any visits to underground cities involve stairs and low, narrow passages.

If you have specific mobility needs or feel uncomfortable in enclosed spaces, speak to us before booking so that we can assess which activities are suitable for you.

After leaving Cappadocia, where valleys, carved rooms and ancient stone had made absence visible, the images need the companions who learned to read that shared light together.

I did not include six months of post-workshop contact by chance, nor as a simple service.

Many years ago, I was teaching an online course that could easily have felt impersonal. Instead, when it ended, the group did not want to dissolve. We had never all sat around the same table, yet years later we are still a living community. From that experience came conversations, magazines, books, friendships and shared ways of looking.

It taught me how valuable a small circle of people can be when they have lived and worked through an experience together.

For this reason, every workshop includes six months of continued contact at no additional cost, and those months are where the photographs are carried to their end, together. A private group keeps the images moving between us: feedback, and a tuition that goes on, fed by cultural prompts — a book, an image, a thought, an exhibition, an occasion that opens a new direction. Each of you brings your images to a master file ready for fine print, and then we sit down, one to one, before the finished work. Then the group meets again, and there is a particular pleasure in it: seeing how far each of us has travelled since we parted. A Second Eye, an editor or a curator, reads the work as the profession reads it. And the work takes form, a collective book or a zine, depending on the event, and a public life, on a gallery wall or in the pages of Follow the Light. The images do not go back into a drawer. They go out into the world, and they go out together.

The event ends. The adventure in photography begins.