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Traveling Tips
Your Approach
Below are four ways we suggest you prepare for your workshop experience with us. Whether you are taking a two week trip to Asia or a weekend workshop in business skills, being ready mentally and strategically will make your experience all the better!
Safety First. It’s all fun and games until someone falls down a flight of stairs, right? No, seriously. While we’ve rarely had issues on our workshops, the savvy travelers who join us get travel insurance for piece of mind. Traveling with expensive gear in sometimes challenging locales requires preparedness in case of emergencies. You want to be sure your policy covers both your equipment and your personal health and safety.
Momenta staff exclusively use the Elite coverage plan from Travel Insure on our domestic and international trips. Elite coverage provides “Cancel for Any Reason” coverage as well as a host of other important protections. If, for any reason your trip has to be canceled, is delayed, or there is an emergency, this package will provide the most complete coverage they offer.
Travel Insure has provided this special link for our network. If you would like to call instead, be sure to use the reference code 32984 for Momenta Workshops.
Planning Second. Getting there may be half the fun but preparing for one of our workshops before you leave is almost more important than the workshop itself. Momenta Workshops specializes in taking photographers to some of the most beautiful and culturally rich locations the world has to offer.
However, we also stress our attendees to be educated travelers and culturally aware of their surroundings. When you know the region, location, and attractions, we find our clients have more fun on the group. So we recommend you do a bit of research prior to leaving.
Likewise, we suggest you prepare copies of your documents as well as a copy of all pre-workshop handouts from us to give to a trusted person at home. Gather your passwords and important personal and health care documents amd save copies in a protected place for someone to access if you need them while on location.
Proper planning can help you be ready for your trip and give you ease of mind while on your learning experience.
Fun Third. Getting ready to leave can be even more when you learn about the location you are visiting. The workshop itself will be a blast! However, we recommend you learn as much as possible about the cultural traditions of the country or city you are visiting before you go. This can include researching online, reading guidebooks, and studying literature relating to your workshop location.
For many of our workshops, we have a suggested research list including books by local authors, movies about the area or the best websites for information on your destination. These are provided prior to the workshop as part of the prospectus documents.
Planning for the workshop helps grow your excitement before the program and also helps for you to plan activities that will be special for you as you explore this destination with us.
Empathy Fourth. These courses are designed for people who are good-natured, flexible, and have a working respect for learning and growing their photography.
We work with each photographer to improve their skill level. We will find the right theme for your vision and help you learn how to make even more beautiful imagery in this exciting location. We will provide support every step of the way.
In return, we only ask you to bring a positive attitude, a shared level of empathy, respect for your fellow participants and our staff, and a willingness to learn. The educational journey will be amazing and eye-opening. You will be photographing for long hours. Our team will give you daily photographic challenges and push you to new heights with your photography. We encourage you to stretch your boundaries and think creatively.
It will be a wonderful experience and we know you will learn more than you thought possible in just a short time. Growth, however, is not easy. You may become tired, hungry, stressed, frustrated, or even emotionally struck by the experiences you are documenting. You may encounter people or organizations that are challenging to photograph. You may have to photograph in dark rooms or outside at high noon. You may have stressful days and we want to help you be successful in this endeavor by helping to support you and give you insight on the best way to handle the situation as a professional.
For all those who attend, we are collectively asking you to approach this workshop with empathy, an open mind, kindness, and patience for yourself, your fellow attendees, and the staff.
Momenta is a team dedicated to supporting your goals of making beautiful images. This experience will be all the better if we all work together with graceful, thoughtful approaches.
The Destination
In the period leading up to your workshop, we will provide you with suggested research and reading lists to prepare you for your destination. In our pre-workshop mailings, we will send along further information pertaining to your travel. This includes packing lists and location specific information. Please see below for a number of links that will help you get started right away!
We teach students how to enterprise daily photo assignments while working in the field. This success of the Momenta model stems from our insistence that clients learn to enterprise daily photo assignments. Success in this derives from being able to recognize and understand social nuances that might be invisible to the less informed traveler. This can only be accomplished by a high level of confidence in social situations and with locals. Please expect that Momenta staffers will suggest, plead and cajole clients to expand their comfort zone whenever possible.
Our Goal
Momenta is committed not only to humanist photojournalism, but also helping travelers become humanists. Over and above the creative development we can bring to aspiring photographers; we seek to create relationships between our students and hosts. We accomplish this by doing everything we can to immerse students in local culture. In a very real sense, our clients are expected to be ambassadors in a positive and respectful manner. Research prior to departure helps our students recognize commonality in the human condition and better adopt a sense of universal morality that is so important in documentary photography.
This being said; we won’t tell you “how” to think…only that you should. In many areas where Momenta operates, right and wrong is somewhat relative. We try to let our clients make their own decisions about social norms based on their own observations and experience. This is the value of travel. At the same time, we frown on practices that exploit residents or break local laws (prostitution, drug use, etc.) Please use proper judgement when traveling on a Momenta Workshop, and we’ll do our best ensure that your experience is a memorable one.
Suggested Travel Research Links
Location Information
BBC Country Profiles
CIA World Fact Book
Lonely Planet Guides
Global Weather
General Travel Advice
Traveller’s Point Guide
Magellan’s Travel Guide
U.S. Department of State
