Dear Fellow Shutterbug,

It’s hard to believe how quickly this year has flown by and how much has happened photographically.

The year began with another amazing travel photography experience in India, a fabulous opportunity to see and photograph this colorful, diverse and fascinating country. Each visit gets a little better as we gain familiarity with each location and develop relationships with various communities. That’s why I will again be offering a travel photography adventure to India in January 2016. Scroll down for more information.

Our visit to Burma/Myanmar was filled with magnificent Buddhist temples and the beautiful people of this newly-opened country. Let me know if you’d be interested in a workshop to this destination.

The spring months brought me back to Texas for another sold-out wildflower workshop. This popular offering will be repeated next April so look for it in the listings below. Then I returned to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden for a fun reunion with friends in Virginia and a fruitful workshop applying digital techniques to the art of flower and garden photography.

The highlight of my spring was my first workshop in Cuba. This is a fascinating country with many economic challenges but warm and friendly people. Our group had many opportunities to photograph in Havana and in towns and villages around the island, even getting into some beautiful stretches of countryside for a glimpse of life in a variety of environments. Having learning from this first exposure, I have organized what promises to be an even better travel photography adventure to Cuba this December. I urge you to take advantage of this opportunity before Cuba goes through changes that will surely come now that its political isolation has ended.

One wonderful development that occurred this spring, thanks to an introduction by one of the participants on the Cuba trip, is a new collaboration with Foto Care, a provider of equipment to the photographic profession in New York City’s photo district. Foto Care co-sponsored a one-day workshop on photographing roses, which took us to the New York Botanical Garden. I also have been invited to offer a series of lectures, free and open to the public, on travel photography. One presentation took place in July and the next one is scheduled on September 17 from 3-5 pm. Click here for details and to register. (BTW, Foto Care’s owner and his wife will be joining me on the December trip to Cuba!)

I recently returned from a sold-out weekend workshop at Chanticleer Pleasure Garden outside Philadelphia and now have my bags packed to take a vacation to southern Africa with Anne. We return in early September and I’ll be ready to run another series of exciting workshops this fall and beyond.

It’s been a pleasure to see and work with many of you throughout 2015 and I look forward to meeting even more of you in months ahead. You’ll find many great opportunities to hone your photographic skills, develop your creative potential, explore the ever-changing dimensions of digital photography, become more mindful and aware of the wonders around you, and learn with like-minded people who enjoy growing through personal interactions with the worlds of nature, flowers, gardens and cultures. So look below at the workshops I’ve lined up for the coming year.

Whether you are a returning student or a new participant, I hope to see you at one or more of these workshops to learn, have fun together and renew or build our connections.

All the best and hope to see you soon,

Allen Rokach