Our planned photography tour to China in 2019 is now finally planned. We have booked all hotels and arrange all the transport.
The next step is the easy part; to put an advertisement together showing every day's activities in photos.
Today I travelled back in time to Guilin to look at the photos we took during our visits in 2016 and earlier this year.
One of the places on our itinerary is the Longji Rice Terraces, also known as the Dragons Backbone Rice Terraces. These terraces are about 100 kilometres north of Guilin and the landscape is very different from the typical Guiling landscape.
The Dragons Backbone
The rice terraces are more than 600 years old and with regular maintenance, they are still serving the community on an annual basis.
Timing a visit is a risky business for a photographer as we want to get good weather and also a very photogenic scenery to photograph.
We decided to plan our visit to coincide with planting season. At the end of May or beginning of June, they fill the rice fields with water and then transfer the young rice plants to the terraces. This is, therefore, the time that you get the beautiful reflections in the terraces. If you are lucky you may get mist in the mornings and if you are very lucky, you may get a beautiful sunrise or sunset with the terraces filled with gold.
The photos in this post were all taken in June 2016, when we did a blitz visit to the Rice Terraces for one night - arriving in the afternoon and leaving the next morning after breakfast.
For our tour next year we decided that a two-night visit will double our chances for getting the elusive golden sunset or sunrise.
If you are interested in our photographic tour, then keep looking here for updates over the next couple of days.
As a teaser, I can mention that the tour will be 16 days long and is totally planned to optimised the photographic opportunities!
This will be our 4th Photoparadise Photographic tour to China, and with every tour, it just gets better!