Reserve a Place
€2.850
8 days · 6 spots remaining
§ Workshop — Masterclass
THE NABATEAN EMPIRE
Petra, Jordain
Departs · 18 May 2027 · 8 days
Participants · 6 · Spots remaining 6
Master · Luca Monti
A photographic workshop across two thousand years of desert civilization — from the rose-carved capital of Petra to the sandstone tombs of AlUla.
Follow the ancient incense roads of the Nabateans — the master merchants and stone-carvers who built an empire not of walls, but of water, and left their signature chiselled into the living rock of two deserts. This eleven-day field expedition traces their civilization end to end: beginning in the rose-red city of Petra, where the Siq splits open to reveal Al-Khazneh, and ending in the mirrored canyons of AlUla, where the tombs of Hegra stand silent beneath the same stars that guided the caravans.
This is a workshop for photographers who understand that a place is not captured — it is earned. We move on foot at dawn and at dusk, the two hours when the desert stone turns from ochre to blood to gold, and we work in small cohorts beside a master who has photographed the Levant and the Hejaz for three decades. You will learn to read light on sandstone the way a geologist reads strata: where the sun will fall, how long it will hold, and when the shadow becomes the subject.
What you will shoot:
• The Treasury and the Monastery at Petra in first light, before the crowds descend • The back-road tombs of Little Petra and the Wadi Musa canyon system • Hegra (Madâin Sâlih) — the southern capital, with its 111 Nabatean tombs and inscriptions • Elephant Rock, Jabal Ikmah (the open-air library of Dadanitic inscriptions), and the Maraya concert hall mirror • Bedouin camps at night — astrophotography over the Gharameel dark-sky reserve • The living culture of the Huwaitat and AlUla camel herders, photographed with consent and time
What you will learn:
• How to manage harsh, high-contrast desert light — exposure stacking, graduated filters, and the discipline of waiting • Architectural and archaeological composition: scale, geometry, and the human figure as a measure of stone • Night and astrophotography in true dark-sky conditions — planning, focusing, and stacking • A respectful, documentary approach to people and culture — the ethics of photographing across a cultural line • Post-production for warm, low-saturation desert palettes in the editorial tradition
This is not a tour. It is a slow, deliberate passage through one of the most photographed and least understood civilizations of the ancient world — led with the rigour of National Geographic and the craft of the Leica Academy, in the conviction that the best photograph is the one made after everyone else has gone home.
§ Post-Workshop
Post-Workshop
The journey does not end when we leave Iceland. After the workshop, each participant will be contacted by email and invited to join a private online group created exclusively for the cohort. For six months, this shared space will remain an extension of the workshop: a place to stay connected with fellow photographers, revisit the experience through images and conversation, and remain in direct contact with your tutor. You will be able to submit photographs for review, continue discussions that began in the field, seek guidance as your visual project develops, and ask for advice when planning future independent journeys. This six-month continuation, included in the workshop fee, is designed to allow the work, the relationships and the photographic way of seeing cultivated during the journey to endure long after the return home.