Traveling Tips

The Journey

It’s all fun and games until someone falls down a flight of stairs. No, seriously. We’ve rarely had issues on our workshops, but savvy travelers get travel insurance. Travel with expensive gear in sometimes challenging locales requires piece of mind. Momenta exclusively uses Elite coverage from Travel Insure. 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 cancelled 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.

On a similar note, Momenta recommends it’s travel agent to any party who needs assistance. For travel bookings, we recommend Regina Bryant with Travel Leaders. Booking through Regina offers unique features and peace-of-mind that online booking does not provide. She can help you change your flight or redirect you if you get bumped from a flight and much more. They also offer a 24 hour international help line. We have no incentive offers with Travel Leaders. We simply love working with Regina and use her company for all our Momenta travel needs!

You can reach Regina at +1 901-761-1708 ext 133 (US) or rbryant@travelleaders.com.

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. Therefore, we suggest prospective attendees do a bit of research prior to leaving, and this doesn’t only mean getting your shots.

When preparing for your workshop, we recommend you learn as much as possible about the cultural traditions of the country you are visiting. 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.

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.