§ Workshop — Intermediate
WHERE MIRAGES ARE BORN
Tataouine, Tunisia
Departs · 09 November 2026 · 7 days
SOLD OUT
In the deep south of Tunisia, stone villages keep watch over oases suspended in silence. We will cross the architectures of the Dahar, the dunes of the Grand Erg and the salt expanses of Chott el-Jérid, following the light to hidden springs among the mountains, where every boundary seems to dissolve.
A photographic journey through the landscapes, communities and memories of the Sahara: where the desert dreams and the horizon becomes a mirage. Where Mirages Are Born is a seven-day visual itinerary through southern Tunisia, beginning in Tataouine and ending in Tozeur.
The journey unfolds across three great narrative territories: the vernacular architecture and Amazigh villages of the Dahar; the dunes, palm groves and communities of the desert regions; and finally the chotts, mountain oases and cinematic landscapes around Tozeur. This workshop is not conceived as a simple sequence of destinations, but as the construction of a coherent photographic story.
We will work on the relationship between light and matter, human presence and landscape, document and interpretation. Each participant will be guided in developing a personal vision of the journey, culminating in a photographic sequence able to convey its atmosphere, rhythm and memory.
§ Field Work
Field Work
The ksour of the Dahar
Chenini stands where two ridges nearly meet, and that near-meeting was the entire plan. Built in the twelfth century by Amazigh families — the word means free men, and they have called themselves that for eight hundred years without anyone managing to make it untrue — the village was placed so that an approaching enemy would see only mountain until it was already too late to matter. What began as a fortified granary, ghorfas stacked like a honeycomb to store grain and oil against raiders, softened over the following century into something gentler: as alliances with Arab tribes brought a measure of peace, families moved from communal fortification into homes dug for warmth rather than war. At the highest point, a white mosque holds the story of the Seven Sleepers — men who closed their eyes expecting an afternoon and woke four centuries later to a changed religion and a changed world. Chenini remains, unusually among the ksour, partly inhabited. Proposed for UNESCO recognition in 2020, it has not yet needed the label to keep being what it is.
Douiret carries an older claim: human presence here reaches back more than ten thousand years, and the village served as an actual fortress during the wars against Roman incursion. Most of it stands empty now, but not all — a handful of families remain in caves their ancestors carved, keeping alive a way of living that predates most of what a visitor would call history.
Guermessa is younger and more martial in character, a lookout post from the Ottoman period built to watch the caravan routes that once tied these mountains to the trade networks of the Sahara.
Two kinds of ruin
Southern Tunisia keeps two categories of abandoned place, and rarely announces which is which.
The first is real. At Hotel Sidi Driss in Matmata, five pit dwellings dug in the nineteenth century and joined by tunnels in the 1960s still function as a working hotel — a family's actual home, repurposed. In 1976, and again in 2002, a film crew arrived, filmed inside those same five rooms, and left. The second category exists only because of that visit: at Nefta, in dunes locally called Eriguet, twenty domed structures have stood since 1997, built for a single production and never inhabited by anyone, not for a day. They are, in their way, the more honest ruin — they never claimed to be anything but a set, and the desert has received them with exactly the same light it gives the real villages a few kilometres away.
We will move between both kinds all week: the ksour that people actually built to live in, and the Tatooine that a production built to be photographed. The difference should matter more by the end of the journey than it does on the first morning.
Ksar Ghilane and the fort the sand kept
At the eastern edge of the Grand Erg Oriental, where the paved road finally gives out, a hot spring feeds an oasis that has drawn travellers for longer than anyone has bothered to record. Some fifty families, once nomadic, now live here from date palms and livestock. Less than a kilometre from the palms stand the ruins of Tisavar, a Roman castellum the desert has spent two thousand years trying to erase and has not quite managed. We will reach it by camel or by quad, and photograph a fort that has outlasted the empire that built it by a considerable margin.
Tozeur, where the desert turns literary
More than two hundred thousand date palms make Tozeur an oasis in the oldest sense — not a mirage but an actual, stubborn fact of water where none should logically be. The medina is built in sculpted ochre brick, a fourteenth-century pattern language that turns simple walls into something closer to weaving. We will work the medina and the palm groves together: the geometry of the brickwork against the irregular green beyond it, the shade that irrigation has made possible for seven centuries running.
The Grand Erg and the dunes of Douz
South of Douz, the paved world gives out into the eastern edge of the Grand Erg Oriental, and the villages here — Zaafrane, Nouil, Sabria among them — exist in continuous negotiation with sand that does not stay where it is put. We will photograph that negotiation directly: palm groves that hold their ground, communities that have learned exactly how much desert a family can absorb before the desert absorbs the family instead.
The mountain oases: Chebika, Tamerza, Midès
Chebika keeps a spring and a small waterfall running through a palm-filled gorge, beneath the ruins of a village the 1969 floods finally emptied. Tamerza, the largest mountain oasis in Tunisia and once the Roman outpost of Ad Turres, holds a seasonal waterfall and its own abandoned old town, stone left to the wind after the same floods. Between them, Midès cuts a gorge deep enough that two different productions have used it as two different worlds — a canyon that has played Tatooine once and an unnamed corner of Europe once, and shows no particular preference for either role.
Nine separate scenes were filmed within Midès alone, and the geology has not noticed the difference. Rock does not audition. It simply endures whatever is asked of it, which is perhaps the nearest thing to a lesson this landscape offers anyone standing in it with a camera.
Ong Jemel and the shape of an invented planet
"The camel's neck" — a rock formation reachable only by 4x4, where a probe once launched from a Sith ship in a film and where, more usefully for our purposes, erosion has produced a silhouette against the sky unlike anything nearby. At Mos Espa, in the dunes north of Nefta, twenty domed structures survive from 1997: a spaceport built for a story, still standing because the desert had no particular objection to keeping it. We photograph it at the hours it deserves — sunrise, sunset — and we do not climb on it. It has already given more than it was asked to.
Teaching themes, in the field
A door at Chenini is not an opening. It is a decision — the exact point where the mountain agrees to stop being solid, for the length of one body passing through. Beyond it: darkness that has learned, over eight centuries, to be a room rather than an absence.
This is where exposure becomes a real argument rather than a setting. Meter for the doorway and the room disappears into black; meter for the room and the doorway burns into a white wound across the frame. We work this properly: spot metering on stone or skin inside the cave, understanding what the sensor can and cannot hold across twelve or more real stops of dynamic range, and deciding — consciously, not by accident — whether the photograph wants the room or the threshold. A single decisive exposure that sacrifices one end on purpose is, more often than not, the better answer than any bracket.
At Chott el-Jérid the ground stops behaving like ground. It gives back the sky before it gives back the earth, and for an hour around noon there is no difference between the two — only white, only a horizon that has quietly started lying to you.
This is the inferior mirage, and we study it here as a working optical fact rather than a curiosity: hot air near the crust bending light upward, a telephoto lens exaggerating the lie, a wide lens mostly hiding it. We work the histogram in earnest on a surface bright enough to fool most metering systems by a full stop or more, exposing to the right without clipping, and we use a polariser as a precise decision about how much sky the salt is allowed to keep — not as a habit reached for out of routine.
A dune near Douz offers the eye nothing to measure itself against. No doorway, no known object, no fixed point — only sand that has never once stayed the same shape twice.
Here the human figure stops being decoration and becomes the only unit of measurement the frame has. A single body against the curve of a ridge tells the viewer everything about distance that the landscape alone cannot say. We work deliberately with placement — how far, how small, how much weight one figure can carry before the emptiness around it stops meaning anything.
Away from any town, the dark here has almost nothing left to compete with. No glow on the horizon, no scattered light bouncing back from a city that isn't there.
This is where we work night photography properly: apertures opened to their honest limit, exposures long enough to gather starlight without trails unless trails are the point, and a foreground chosen because it earns its place in the frame — not because the sky demanded company and the ground happened to be nearby.
A note before we cross south of Tataouine
The Tunisian National Guard requires a desert pass for travel south of the town, and this registration is handled before you arrive — a real administrative fact, not a note of alarm. Every current government advisory, British, American and Canadian alike, places its restricted zones along the Libyan border and in the western mountains, well outside this route. Tataouine, Matmata, Ksar Ghilane, Chott el-Jérid, Tozeur: none of it falls inside a line anyone has drawn on a map. We mention the pass because it is part of how the journey is organised, not because it says anything about the risk.
The horizon that lies
A mirage is not an error of the eye. It is the horizon telling the truth about the heat that made it. Photograph it as a mistake to correct and you lose the subject; photograph it as a fact of the air and the frame holds. The chott does the same thing at ground level: directional light gives the salt its relief, a low sun raking sideways across the crust; glare from above flattens the same crust into nothing. Choose the angle before you choose the exposure — here the two are the same decision.
The salt flat
A landscape can be described with total precision and still remain strange — that is the condition of the chott, not a failure of the photograph. Do not resolve it. Let the crust read as both a map and a wound, sharp in the shadow line, uncertain in the glare. The camera's job is to keep both readings alive in one frame, not to pick the honest one.
Where mirages are born
I have never trusted a horizon in the Sahara, and I was right not to.
What you see is a lake. It is not a lake. Hot ground heats the air above it faster than the air higher up, and light bends passing between the two — the same bend that breaks a straw in a glass of water, only here it takes the whole sky and folds it flat across the sand. Physicists call it an inferior mirage. Travellers on foot, for as long as anyone can remember, have called it a reason to carry more water than the horizon suggests you need.
At Chott el-Jérid it happens around noon, when the light is worst for anything else and best for this. A telephoto lens makes it worse — compresses the false water until it looks close enough to walk to. A wide lens mostly kills it. I have stood there and watched six people point six different focal lengths at the same patch of nothing and photograph six different lies.
There is a city, if you can call it that, which exists only at certain hours and only from certain distances, and which has never once, in all the centuries anyone has crossed this desert, permitted itself to be reached.
It has towers, sometimes. Sometimes water, sometimes palm groves that were never planted by anyone. It changes its shape according to who is looking and how badly they need it to be true. This is not deception in the ordinary sense — a mirage does not lie to you so much as it answers a question you did not know you were asking, which is: what would you cross this whole desert to find, if you were certain, for one moment, that you would actually find it?
The people who have walked this ground longest have a name for the place where such a city might appear, and the name is not a warning. It is closer to an invitation, carefully worded. They say the jinn gather there, in a seam of the world where near and far, solid and liquid, here and not-quite-here, briefly lose interest in staying separate — and where a traveller, walking toward what he believes is water, is in fact walking toward the one honest question the desert ever asks anyone: how much of what you are looking for did you bring with you before you arrived?
The mirage does not fail. It tells the truth the only way the desert knows how: by showing what is missing. The water that isn't there. The city that isn't there. You, who were always there.
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.
§ The Light Map
The Light Map
Mid-November gives southern Tunisia a light that has grown oblique without losing the warmth of the day. In Chenini and the villages of the Dahar, a wall can hold sunlight while the path beneath it remains cool. We follow those uneven arrivals of light through places still inhabited, rather than treating the villages as arrangements of stone alone.
From 9 to 16 November, sunrise at Tataouine moves from approximately 06:43 to 06:49 and sunset from 17:20 to 17:16. At Tozeur, the western reference for the oasis and salt landscapes, sunrise shifts from 06:54 to 07:00 and sunset from 17:28 to 17:23. The photographic day contracts as the route unfolds.
New moon falls on 9 November, the first day of the workshop. The first nights are almost moonless; a young crescent then returns low in the evening sky and grows towards first quarter, reached just after we leave. Lunar interference is limited across the journey, leaving substantial darkness for the desert sky beyond the lights of villages and hotels. Cloud, haze and dust still determine how much of that sky becomes visible.
November’s climate averages around Tataouine are about 11°C at night and 22°C by day, cooling as the month advances. Elevated villages and exposed desert stops can feel cooler, particularly after sunset. Wind may lift sand and reduce distant contrast; occasional rain can alter access to low ground and salt surfaces.
Across Chott el-Jérid and Chott el-Gharsa, the image depends on how much certainty we allow the horizon. Directional light reveals the salt’s small relief; glare and haze can remove it. We make space for both readings. A landscape can be described precisely and still remain strange.
§ What You Will Learn
What You Will Learn
A mirage asks us to look twice. So does a village seen only from the road. In southern Tunisia, we will learn to give the photograph enough time to move beyond its first impression: a bright dune, a dark doorway, a figure crossing a square. What matters is how these observations begin to belong to one another.
Light, earth and exposure
Across the Dahar, the dunes and the chotts, the same sunlight meets very different surfaces. You will learn to judge reflected light, protect important highlights and decide how much detail a shadow needs. We will use the histogram alongside careful observation, and compare exposures when a scene exceeds the range of a single frame. The aim is a considered tonal structure, with room for both the brightness and the austerity of the desert.
Tripod work, neutral-density and graduated filters will be connected to specific decisions about movement and contrast. We will examine when a polariser helps, when it removes a reflection worth keeping, and how stray light changes the clarity of an image.
Architecture and the inhabited landscape
In the earthen settlements, you will work with camera height, viewpoint and focal length to describe passages, façades and the spaces between buildings. A wide lens changes the relationship between near and far; a longer lens brings distant forms into closer visual association. You will learn to choose a position before choosing how much to include.
We will follow the transition from built shelter to open ground, looking for photographs in which architecture reveals how people inhabit this territory.
People, distance and permission
Environmental portraits begin with an encounter. You will practise approaching people, communicating through our local contacts, and recognising when a photograph is welcome. We will work with available light and the surroundings the person already inhabits, attending to expression, gesture and the distance that allows an encounter to remain comfortable.
The choice to lower the camera is part of this judgement. A meaningful journey can contain experiences that never become images.
From Tataouine to Tozeur
Daily reviews will connect the architectural world of the Dahar with dunes, palm groves, salt flats and the oases around Tozeur. You will learn to vary scale and pace, use colour and black and white intentionally, and select pictures that develop the story rather than repeat it.
By the end, your sequence should carry a particular experience of Tunisia: the places you understood, the people who welcomed you and the questions that remained open.
§ The Itinerary
The Itinerary
§ Phase 01
Dahar villages
Chenini, Douiret and Guermessa
A village that has learned to hide does not photograph like an ordinary village. Chenini stands exactly where two ridges nearly meet, and that near-meeting was the entire plan: an approaching enemy would see only mountain, until it was already too late. The Amazigh — free men, they have called themselves that for eight hundred years without anyone managing to disprove it — built fortified granaries here, stacked like a honeycomb, then softened them with peace into homes dug for warmth rather than war. Photographically, the day opens with the oldest problem in photography: a small doorway, dark inside, blinding outside. We meter on the stone inside the cave, understand what the sensor can hold across twelve or more real stops of dynamic range, and decide — not by accident — whether the image wants the room or the threshold. Douiret adds ten thousand years of continuous human presence to the same question; Guermessa, Ottoman and more martial in character, closes the day with raking light over the ruins above the old caravan routes.
§ Phase 02
Tataouine region
The ksour of Tataouine
Ksar Ouled Soltane, Ezzahra, Ouled Debbab, Hadada: multi-storey ghorfas, vaulted cells stacked like a sentence repeated in stone. Here the technical work shifts from exposure to scale — no fixed reference point in a courtyard full of identical vaults, so the human figure becomes the only unit of measurement the frame possesses. Tataouine also lent its name to an imagined planet. We will identify clearly which locations were genuinely used for the film and which were not — not to chase a cinematic trophy, but because the distance between the real place and the invented one is itself the day's lesson.
§ Phase 03
Troglodyte dwellings and desert edge
Matmata and Ksar Ghilane
At Hotel Sidi Driss you can still sleep in the room where Luke Skywalker's uncle once poured coffee from a moisture farm that never existed. Five pits dug in the nineteenth century, joined by tunnels added in the 1960s so a family could run a hotel out of what had been their actual home. George Lucas came twice, twenty-four years apart, and used the same five rooms both times. From here, on to Ksar Ghilane: a hot spring feeding an oasis at the edge of the Grand Erg Oriental, fifty families once nomadic, and less than a kilometre away the ruins of the Roman fort of Tisavar, which the desert has spent two thousand years trying to erase without quite managing it. We reach it by camel or by quad, and photograph a fort that has outlasted the empire that built it.
§ Phase 04
Desert and palm groves
The Grand Erg and Douz
Beyond the asphalt, Zaafrane, Nouil, Sabria — villages in permanent negotiation with sand that never stays where it is put. Here the photographic problem is scale without reference: a dune offers no doorway, no known object, nothing the eye can use to judge distance. A single body against the curve of a ridge tells the viewer everything the landscape alone cannot say. At night, far from any town, the dark has almost nothing left to compete with. We work with the widest honest aperture, exposures long enough to gather starlight without trails — unless the trail is the point — and a foreground chosen because it earns its place in the frame, not because the sky demanded company.
§ Phase 05
Salt landscapes and oasis city
Chott el-Jérid, Nefta and Tozeur
I have never trusted a horizon in the Sahara, and I was right not to. Hot ground heats the air above it faster than the air higher up, and light bends passing between the two — the same bend that breaks a straw in a glass of water, only here it takes the whole sky and folds it flat across the sand. This is the inferior mirage, and we study it as a real optical fact: a telephoto lens exaggerates the lie, a wide lens mostly hides it; we work the histogram exposing to the right without clipping, on a surface bright enough to fool most metering systems by a full stop or more. There is a city, if you can call it that, which exists only at certain hours and only from certain distances, and which has never once let itself be reached. Those who have walked this ground longest say the jinn gather there, in a seam of the world where near and far briefly stop staying separate. The mirage does not fail. It tells the truth the only way the desert knows how: by showing what is missing. The exterior of the Lars family farm was filmed right here, across three different productions — a joke this particular stretch of salt seems to enjoy more than most.
§ Phase 06
Chebika, Tamerza and Midès
The mountain oases
Two hundred thousand date palms make Tozeur an oasis in the oldest sense: not a mirage, but a stubborn fact of water where none should logically be. The medina is built in sculpted ochre brick, a fourteenth-century pattern language that turns simple walls into something close to weaving — we work the geometry of the brickwork against the irregular green beyond it. Then Chebika, Tamerza, Midès: a spring and a small waterfall inside a palm-filled gorge, beneath the ruins of a village emptied by the floods of 1969. Tamerza, the largest mountain oasis in Tunisia, once the Roman outpost of Ad Turres. Midès cuts a gorge deep enough to have played two different worlds in two different productions — nine scenes filmed there alone — and the geology has not noticed the difference. Rock does not audition. It simply endures whatever is asked of it, which may be the nearest thing to a lesson this landscape offers anyone standing in it with a camera.
§ Phase 07
Salt landscape and desert set
Chott el-Gharsa and Ong Jemel
Before sunrise, towards Chott el-Gharsa, the first light across the salt landscape and the rock formation of Ong Jemel — "the camel's neck" — reachable only by 4x4, where erosion has produced a silhouette against the sky unlike anything nearby. Then Mos Espa, near Nefta: twenty domed structures surviving from 1997, a spaceport built for a story, still standing because the desert had no particular objection to keeping it. We photograph it at the hours it deserves — sunrise, sunset — and we do not climb on it. It has already given more than it was asked to. The collective edit closes the week: not a catalogue of views of southern Tunisia, but an understanding of what gives a place its photographic meaning — and the transformation of that understanding into an authentic body of work.
§ Accommodation
Accommodation
Where we sleep
Wait until you see where we sleep. Every one of these places I chose myself, and none of them could stand anywhere else on earth. Eight nights, from Tataouine on Sunday 8 November to Tozeur on Monday 16 November — each roof a little deeper inside the country than the last, from the stone of the Dahar to the sand of the Grand Erg Oriental, to the salt, to the water hidden in the mountains.
Sunday · the arrival
Sunday is yours, and it is offered by London Photographic Workshop. You come from different corners of the world, on different flights, at different hours, and nobody should have to hurry. Arrive when you can. We come to meet you in Tataouine, and we take you the rest of the way ourselves, south into the hills, towards Chenini, up the road that climbs until the village stops being built on the mountain and starts being made of it.
That evening we sit down together for the first time, at one table, inside the mountain. It is a courtesy, and we mean it as one: the oldest kind, the one a house offers to those who have travelled far to reach it. Strangers at the first course, something else by the last. Before the light, before the cameras, there are the people you will share them with.
Chenini · inside the stone
Three nights at Dar Kenza in Chenini, where the rooms are not rooms. They are caves, the rock of the village opened just enough to hold a bed. The wall you sleep against is the mountain. At first light you step out of the stone and into the same stone, only to discover that you have slept inside one of your pictures. Three nights, because the first morning you see the path, and only the third morning you see what the light keeps for those who wait.
Ksar Ghilane · the edge of the Erg
One night in a camp beside the oasis, where the Grand Erg Oriental begins. At noon the dunes are nothing. At dusk they are everything, and before sunrise they are everything again — and here we are already among them when the hour turns, not driving towards it. A hot spring waits under the palms. After a day of sand, you will know why it is there.
Douz · the pause among palms
The next night at The Residence Douz, villas set in a palm grove at the gate of the Sahara. This is the one night the journey asks nothing of you. Sleep. On the far side of morning, Chott el-Jérid is already white and waiting.
Tozeur · the brick city
Then Tozeur, and Dar Tozeur, hidden in the medina: courtyards, terraces, and brick laid by hand into patterns that the sun rewrites hour by hour. From here we reach Chott el-Jérid, Nefta, Chott el-Gharsa and Ong Jemel. We keep this house twice — though not on two nights in a row.
Tamerza · the night between
On the day of Chebika, Tamerza and Midès, we eat at Mides Family Resto, a family table at the mouth of the canyon. That evening we do not drive back. We stay in Tamerza, at Chez Mounir, and let the mountain oases go on living after the photographic hours are over — because a place tells you the truth only once the cameras are down.
The last night
After the final photographic day we return to Tozeur. The last night is offered by London Photographic Workshop: one more table, and by now the table has a memory — the same light, carried home in as many ways as there are people around it.
Monday · the leaving
Monday 16 November is offered too, because saying goodbye takes time. Time to exchange a postcard, a phone number, an email address; to give someone a photograph. And time to take leave of the places themselves, which do not let go of you at once. Then each of you leaves at your own hour, and the desert leaves with you, unfinished.
§ The Equipment
The Equipment
§ Photo Gear
Photo Gear
Essential equipment
Tripod
A sturdy tripod is one of the most important tools for this workshop. It is essential for dawn, sunset and night photography, and provides greater precision when working with long exposures or carefully constructed compositions. Choose a compact, reliable model that can be carried comfortably throughout the day. A carbon-fibre tripod is particularly suitable, as it combines good stability with considerably less weight.
Filters and lens hood
Filters are fundamental in the desert, where the contrast between bright skies, sunlit sand and deep shadow can be extreme. A high-quality system of cinematic filters—particularly neutral-density and graduated neutral-density filters—offers greater control over exposure and tonal balance, helping preserve detail and achieve a more considered visual language. A good lens hood is equally essential: it reduces flare, shields the front element from stray light and offers valuable protection from wind-blown sand. A bellows lens hood, such as those made by LEE Filters, is especially effective.
LPW recognises that high-quality filters and a bellows lens hood are valuable but often expensive accessories that few photographers own. For this reason, London Photographic Workshop makes a complete, professional, top-of-the-range LEE Filters kit—including filters and bellows lens hoods—available for participants to use during the workshop.
Ziplock
One of the most useful items in the desert is a supply of press-to-seal ZIPLOCK freezer bags and strong elastic bands. Sand finds its way into almost every camera bag or backpack, especially during a sandstorm. Protect each piece of equipment individually, preferably using two bags secured with an elastic band. It is the lightest practical alternative to a Pelican case. The secret? ZIPLOCK.
§ Personal Gear
Personal Gear
Southern Tunisia in November: warm days, cool nights, hill villages of stone, and the white crust of the salt lakes. Here is what the body needs.
Southern Tunisia teaches modesty in packing. The villages climb, the paths are stone, the salt lakes blind the eye at midday and the evenings turn cool without warning. I would rather you arrived with less and chose it well: shoes you trust, a scarf, water always within reach. The rest, the desert will decide for you.
What you bring
What we buy together
What we bring for you
All the rest travels with us in a waterproof dry bag: a local SIM card, and a loan phone if needed; a Starlink satellite connection wherever we stop; a walkie-talkie; a first-aid kit; a satellite locator beacon and an emergency flare for the desert; a compass, a map case and printed maps; a tablet for every two people; a little local currency; a laminated emergency sheet; a compact phrasebook; document pouches; and your own printed copy of our unique guide.
§ Travel Conditions
Travel Conditions
Our students arrive from all over the world, so it is perfectly possible that you may land at an airport other than Tunis. This is not a problem. Please let us know where and when you will arrive on Sunday 8 November, at least seven days in advance.
We will arrange your transfer to Tataouine, and the cost is included in the workshop fee. This allows the whole group to meet on Sunday evening before the photographic programme begins.
Over a relaxed welcome dinner offered by London Photographic Workshop, we will have time to introduce ourselves, get to know one another and begin the journey together before the first day in the field.
The seven-day photographic itinerary runs from Monday 9 to Sunday 15 November, beginning in Tataouine and ending in Tozeur. Daily timings and routes remain responsive to light, access, weather and local conditions.
The workshop concludes on Sunday afternoon. We strongly recommend that participants do not arrange their departure for Sunday evening. The final night in Tozeur is offered by London Photographic Workshop, allowing the group to share one last dinner, reflect on the work and travel onward comfortably on Monday 16 November.
§ Safety & Accessibility
Safety & Accessibility
In the Tunisian Sahara, the light changes with the terrain: dunes, palm groves and salt landscapes invite us to pause and observe. We will travel in 4x4 vehicles, getting close to our photographic locations where access allows. The oases of Douz and Ksar Ghilane can be reached by road; access to tracks and sandy areas farther into the desert will be assessed with local operators. Walks to photographic locations may cross soft sand, uneven ground and gentle rises; climbing dunes takes more effort and should not be confused with a level stroll. Walking times and difficulty will be specified for the routes actually selected. Closed footwear, water and protection from sun and wind will help you concentrate on photography in greater comfort. Any variation will always be decided with the group’s safety and the quality of the experience as the first priorities.
Each participant will receive a carefully prepared printed Field Guide: a practical companion to the entire workshop, containing essential contact details, emergency information, precise maps and the travel guidance needed for every stage of the itinerary. We deliberately favour a printed format over a digital one: in areas where mobile data, network coverage and electrical access can be intermittent, a physical guide remains reliable, immediate and always at hand.
Whenever you move away from the group to make photographs, we ask that you do so in pairs. This simple practice allows participants to work independently while preserving awareness, communication and mutual support.
In desert areas, radios will be provided to maintain communication between participants, groups and vehicles. Local mobile phones with Tunisian SIM cards will also be made available, giving every participant access to emergency calls and the ability to make local calls within Tunisia.
§ Post-Workshop
Post-Workshop
After leaving Tozeur, with the stone villages of the Dahar, the salt expanses of the chotts and their dissolving boundaries still active in the eye, the images need the cohort that followed those mirages 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: a private group, image sharing, feedback, and a form of ongoing tuition shaped by cultural prompts — a book, an image, a thought, an exhibition, or an occasion that may open a new direction in the work.
The event ends. The adventure in photography begins.