An African Experience

You’ll embark on a truly unique voyage that few westerners get the opportunity to experience. You’ll take part in an African experience in which your guides will lead you to exotic locales where you’ll experience, interact and immerse yourself with the locals and local cultures first hand, behold magnificent vistas and observe African big game and other wildlife on breathtaking safaris. You will capture magnificent, out-of-this-world images with your camera that will stay in your head heart and mind forever. This is a rare opportunity to come to Uganda as a photographer and to see East Africa from the perspective of westerners who have lived and worked there extensively. We look forward to sharing this with you, guiding you through your dream safari with all the flexibility and exclusivity that this once in a lifetime trip deserves.

We’ll schedule our outings to take advantage of the “magic light times” of dawn and dusk to get up close with wildlife during the safaris in the National Parks. You will learn about the dynamics between the park’s wildlife and the local village people. Learn the history of tourism and big game hunting as well as how responsible tourism positively impacts these communities.

We will be able to get “up close and personal” with Ugandan families involved in Boulder’s BeadforLife project for some unbelievable portrait and home life photo opportunities. Most excitingly, we will have leisurely opportunities to watch the great animals and birds of the African Savannah on game drives set up specifically for photographers; the right times of day, the right places for good perspective and backgrounds, the right vehicles so everyone has great lines of vision, and the right amounts of time at each spot to really settle in for that “shot of a lifetime.” And if you’re not a photographer but your traveling companion is, there will be a variety of fun opportunities to learn about the ecology, the environment, and the crucial role of conservation. There will be plenty of time for just relaxing by the pool, or taking part in a variety of other activities that are available both in the city and in the bush. 

Join Charles Steinberg M.D, who has lived, worked, shot images and has explored and loved the game parks of Uganda since 2003, Accompanying the group will be your Safari Guide and Conservationist, Mark Jordahl, an American ex-patriot who currently lives in Uganda, and Brian Rabin, lead instructor from Mike’s Camera; an accomplished, published photographer and a very passionate instructor who loves teaching photography. So along with seeing and photographing, you’ll have the opportunity to learn about the creatures and the land we encounter, and hear about the current thoughts and approaches to conservation of this amazing part of the world.

Charles can be reached by email at charles@charlesandtorkin.com

Schedule Overview

Arrival to Entebbe: Orientation and walking tour around hotel.

Day 1

Owino Market or Ngamba Island ro view chimps. Evening, Ndere Dancers performance.

Day 2

Murchison Falls Game Park & Paraa Game Lodge, www.paraalodge.com. Afternoon game drive.

Day 3

Morning boat trip to delta scheduled for the magic light hours. Afternoon boat trip to Murchison Falls.

Day 4

Morning game drive, lunch and rest, often by the pool.

Afternoon game drive, and boat trip joined by trained guides from the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

These guides can see the lions a mile off, and will join Mark in teaching and answering questions.

Day 5

Morning game drive, final photo review session and game drive. Fly to a small airstrip in the Kidepo Valley National Park, located in the remote North Eastern parts of Uganda on Sudanese Border. While still luxurious, the Apoka resort is a series of separate bungalows, also with a central pool. A true “Out of Africa” experience- the real, old untouched Africa. The ride from the airstrip to the bungalows is a game drive in itself.

Day 6

Morning game drive. Lunch and rest. Afternoon game drive.

Day 7

Morning game drive. Lunch and rest. Afternoon game drive

One or more of these game viewing experiences at Kidepo can be a walking safari. The thrill of walking along a herd of elephants or buffalo is beyond description.

Day 8

Morning game drive. Afternoon, fly to a private air strip near Kampala.

Day 9

Rest from safari or free time to shop, shoot and explore Kampala on your own. Afternoon visit M-Lisada orphanage. These kids will melt everyone’s hearts, sing and play their band songs and do their dances and you’ll capture some incredible photos.

Day 10

Visit the BeadforLife project, and learn about poverty eradication, talk to people who will openly and in a friendly way tell you about living on less than a dollar a day: A zillion photos of bright colors, lovely faces and

dancing women. Or a visit to the Infectious Diseases Institute to learn about AIDS in Africa, where Charles has been volunteering for the past six years, or various other projects around the city.

Day 11

Botanical gardens or Entebbe Wildlife Centre. This is on the way to the airport and a great way to photograph any animals you missed in the wild. including rhinos (none in the parks)- and a great bird aviary with plenty of exotic birds. Then lunch and good-byes for an evening departure.

This outline is for planning your trip and may be modified.

Trip Highlights

Entebbe sits on the northern shores of Lake Victoria; Africa’s largest lake will serve our home base where we’ll fly in and out of Uganda. Entebbe boasts The National Botanical Gardens of Uganda, a beautiful and picturesque park which was laid out in 1898, situated close to the shores of Lake Victoria. The gardens are divided into different zones, including a rainforest zone, which formed scenes of the backdrop to the Tarzan films of the 1940’s. A tour of the National Zoo at the Entebbe Wildlife Centre at the end of our trip will provide photo ops of any of the animals we may have missed during the safaris.

Kampala is the capital of Uganda and the largest city in the country. Kampala hosts one of only seven Bahá’í Houses of Worship in the world. Other landmarks include the Kasubi tombs, the magnificent mosque at old Kampala, Namirembe and Rubaga Cathedral and Kasumba Square Mall. You’ll enjoy walking around the city and discover many out of the ordinary photo opportunities.

Ndere Dancers Performance - The Ndere Dancers perform a traditional show based on the tribal dances from each area of Uganda, as well as neighboring Rwanda, Burundi and western Kenya. We will see the dance performed for the king and queen of Uganda and their daughter. Each tribe then puts forward a champion who has to break a magic white stick in order to win the hand of the princess in marriage. This is a fabulous introduction to Ugandan dance and culture and an evening full of brilliant bright colors, wild and exciting action, and amazingly beautiful Ugandan dancers, all combining into some fabulous available light photographic opportunities.

Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary - Watch the chimpanzees play, the magnificent Mountain Gorillas swing, and the baboons stare curiously at you. Nowhere else in the world live as many different primate species! You’ll also see an abundant rainforest that boasts towering trees, over 325 bird species, and over 140 species of fluttering butterflies.

Murchison Falls Game Park - Uganda’s largest game park provides the perfect backdrop for capturing out of this world images, track animals, and view birds. You’ll encounter elephants, giraffes, baboons, hippos, buffaloes, antelope of various kinds, lions, warthogs, hyenas, leopards, as well as hundreds of species of birds, storks or the elusive shoebill stork, reptiles, butterflies and a savanna that is beautiful. The forests will just make you want to take a hike, and then there are the falls:  Absolutely fantastic! If you have only three days to spare, Murchison Falls National Park is the place to experience the serenity, beauty and solitude of the quintessential African Safari. 

M-Lisada Orphanage - The children are so welcoming and warm; they will have a dynamite music presentation prepared for us, with their own brass band and an enlivened choir. They’ll sing about the stories of their lives, and will also love that you want to photograph them.

Kidepo Valley National Park & Lodge - Few undertake the pilgrimage to this remote park but the spectacular beauty of this pristine wilderness impresses all that make it. It reminds one of how all of Africa used to be. For the visiting birder, Kidepo Valley National Park boasts a bird list of over 475 species. Amongst the host of dry, Eastern “specials” not found in any other Ugandan national park are some of East Africa’s rarest and most sought after birds such as Black-breasted Barbet, the three foot tall Shoebill on the verge of extinction, and Karamoja Apallis. This luxury lodge is located in the middle of Kidepo National Park with spacious free standing bungalows with a private veranda. Relaxing in your freshly drawn hot water bath tub on the veranda, listening to the roar of nearby lions, the trumpeting of elephants and the myriad of other savannah sounds combines a thrilling auditory experience in this most relaxing and beautiful setting.

Each room has a sitting room and en-suite bathroom. The restaurant and swimming pool provide comfortable friendly places to meet up with the rest of our group. At Kidepo, we will have the entire resort to ourselves. The lodge at Murchison often hosts conferences and has perfect meeting rooms for our supportive and appreciative critique sessions.

Bead For Life Project - This poverty eradication project is entering its sixth year and has been amazingly successful in building bridges between impoverished women from Uganda, all living on less than a dollar a day, most with HIV/AIDS and western women of good heart who want to make a difference. The jewelry is very beautiful, and almost impossible to imagine it is made from throw away magazine paper. The paradigm that recycled trash becomes beauty which gives work to impoverished women, and then this beauty almost immediately turns into food, housing, school fees and medicine for the BeadforLife communities. A Almost every image on the award winning BeadforLife website (www.beadforlife.org) was shot by Charles Steinberg M.D., who’s wife Torkin Wakefield is one of the project’s co-founders. The beaders love having their pictures taken, since they realize you are doing your part to spread the word about their project.

The Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), Makerere University Medical School, Kampala, is the AIDS center Dr. Charles has worked at these last 5 years. IDI actively cares for about 10,000 patients, about half receiving the life saving antiretroviral (ARVs) drugs. This large volume patient care center is combined with a Training Center of Excellence for doctors and nurses from all over Uganda, and the rest of the African continent. We will arrange a special meeting for those in our group who choose with a panel of people living with HIV/AIDS, where we can learn firsthand from the real experts what having AIDS in Africa is like. These IDI ambassadors enjoy having their photos snapped, as they also appreciate your role in helping tell their story.

Your Trip Guides

Charles Steinberg, M.D., Photographer

Charles Steinberg M.D. is an AIDS treating physician from Boulder Colorado. Charles teaches physicians and nurses internationally on how to treat HIV/AIDS. Charles has done international medical work in Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Nepal, Mexico, Peru, Romania and the Ukraine. He has spent most of the last 5 years in East Africa.

Charles is also a professional photographer, who teaches photography in British Columbia and is wildly published. He also uses his images in his medical teaching. He is the photographer for his wife’s project in Uganda, BeadforLife. His photos fill the BeadforLife website www.beadforlife.org with potent, colorful images that convey the poverty of the eastern African people and the eradication of poverty and hope that the project brings to the people. More of his work can also be seen at http://www.charlessteinbergphotography.com

Mark Jordahl- Safari Guide, Conservationist

Mark Jordahl lives in Uganda with his wife and 3½-year old son. His work in Africa lies at the intersection between wildlife conservation and tourism, exploring ways to use community-based tourism to help local people derive income from the protection of wildlife and healthy ecosystems.

Mark did his fieldwork for his Masters degree in Conservation Education at Murchison Falls National Park, one of the parks we will be visiting on this trip, and has led several trips to Uganda in the past. By focusing on the relationships between wildlife and people in Uganda, Mark will provide some of the context that will help make your experiences and your photographs richer.

Brian Rabin- Photographer, Educator

Brian is a seasoned photographer and a lead instructor at Mike’s Camera. Brian is well known for his enthusiasm and passionate instruction style and brings over 20 years of experience in various photographic disciplines including event photography, portraiture, macro and street photography. His work has appeared in one-man shows, group exhibits and has been published in national and local magazines. Brian is also a Certified Photographic Consultant, by Photographic Marketing Association International and a past member of Professional Photographers of America (P.P.A.). Originally from New Jersey, Brian now calls Colorado home.

Brian is a graduate of the New England School of Photography were he specialized in Classical Portraiture and Experimental Color Procedures. The combination of the two disciplines reflects his outlook on life and his personal style of balancing the traditional point of view with a splash of something new or experimental. For Brian, photography is a vehicle to explore life. He can often be heard saying “I hope my students learn as much about photography as they teach me about people, photography and life in the classes I instruct.”

Photography & Education

Each participant will be responsible for making their own flight arrangements and paying the transportation costs to and from Entebbe, Uganda’s International Airport. We can help with suggested routes, airlines and travel agents. The trip cost includes everything from your pick up at Entebbe Airport to your return there 11 days later. All park fees, guide fees, housing costs, meals we eat together (a few meals in Kampala will be on your own), in country transportation in comfortable passenger mini busses with great window exposures, or pop top 4 wheel drive vehicles and private charter flights, game drives, boat trips and group activity costs are included.

You’ll take part in seminars on various topics on photographic techniques that you’ll have the opportunity to put into practice with each day’s shooting opportunities. Topics will include aperture, shutter speed, the aesthetic understanding of composition, seeing and understanding light, wide angle, macro, and telephoto photography.

Each day there will be significant time when we are not taking pictures, and each day, we’ll take the time to share together in our group the images we’ve taken and submit for our own brand of loving, supportive critique.

We will review and work on technical skills that may be needed for the next day as well as sharing our artistic eyes with each other. It can be most instructive to see how different individuals deal with the same photo op and see all the ways our personal creativity expresses itself.
 

If this trip sounds like the one you have dreamt about, email us for full details, and sign up early. Space will be limited. We look forward to getting to know you and your photographic interests, and personal photo instruction will be specifically geared to your level and your questions.

For additional information email brianr@mikescamera.com

or check out mikescamera.com/learn and look for the African Safari listing

or call Brian Rabin at 303-443-1715

Jambo! “Hello”, in Swahili

What is not included in the fare is your airfare to and from Entebbe and any trip insurance or emergency medical insurance you choose, any medical costs to prepare for the trip (we will provide a list of recommended vaccines and malaria prevention pills), your Uganda entrance visa purchased when you land in Entebbe, any personal shopping or individual tipping you wish to do, and any adventures you plan outside our itinerary. Also, a quirk of most African lodges to be aware of, is that the fares do not include beverages at mealtime. However, bottled

drinking water for the daytime, bus trips, your hotel room and game drives are included.

About Uganda

Uganda was called “The pearl of Africa” by Winston Churchill. The climate is perfect; the country is safe, and one feels at ease there. The game parks are much less crowded than those in Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa. In the Uganda game parks you often can go half a day without seeing other tourists, while elsewhere in Africa you can be fighting for a parking place near the game with 25 other vehicles. This is so important for wildlife photography, and by avoiding multiple vans of noisy tourists moving as fast as they can to “check off” their lists, we will have the peace and quietness needed to really be present with the wildlife and then create the images we want.

In fact it is important to emphasize that this is the energy of our entire trip. Our trip will be “one moment in every moment” and focus on the quality, not the quantity, of the experience.

This 11 day trip is designed for a maximum of 15 participants. You can add additional days to your trip and customize your schedule. The approximate schedule will include several days with the BeadforLife project, one day with the Infectious Disease Institute, and 6-days at the game parks. There will be time to wander around parts of Kampala with your camera too, looking at the typical life and culture there, where you’ll see a unique blend of traditional Africa mixed with influences from the west. Most of our photo opportunities will be pre-arranged in order to avoid the worry of taking pictures of locals that prefer not to be photographed. We will remain as flexible as possible to accommodate individual interests and schedule as we go

Join us at the Denver Zoo for our second annual Photo Safari & Test Drive and snap up some great wildlife pictures. Take advantage of this great event that’s fun for kids and grown-ups. Enjoy FREE loaners from of latest cameras to exotic telephoto lenses and other photo gear from your favorite manufacturers and pick up some great photo tip and tricks from your Mike's Camera crew.

We’ll have shooting stations set up throughout the zoo and you’ll be able to test drive some of the most exciting new gear from your favorite manufacturers, including Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Tamron, Sony, & Promaster!

Event Hours, 10:00AM-5-00PM

Valid Credit Card & Driver’s License is required for equipment check out. Test Drive Loaners are FREE, and restrictions apply. See the Mike's Camera Booth at the Denver Zoo on May 22, 2010 or stop by any of our stores for more details.  

Date & Time:

Saturday June 5th, 2010

10:00 AM- 2:00 PM

Location:

Starz FilmCenter

900 Auraria Parkway

Denver, CO 80204

●  Easy Color Corrections

●  Creating Gorgeous Grayscales

●  Creative “cookie-cutter” Edges

●  Portrait Retouching

●  Creating Hand Painted Partial Color Effects

●  Creating Perfect Panoramas

 Register Online

Digital Divas: Girls’ Night Out!

The Photography Event for Creative Women

Treat yourself and your friends to an evening of discovery, photography and fun! You'll learn how to take better pictures, and experience a variety of new and exiting ways to create unique photo inspired items and have more fun with your pictures than you ever thought possible.

Our stores will be transformed into a number of educational stations that will present photography tips for better picture taking and exhibits that will showcase and present the latest in creating fun and creative photo gifts items: PhotoBooks and Photo Greeting Cards, Photo Storage and Archiving solutions, photos and videos to DVD Conversions to watch on your HD-TV, and creating one-of-a-kind Wall Art pieces from your original photos… all in a fun social setting created especially for you, the female photographer and memory maker… the Digital Diva!

This event will be held at all Mike’s Camera locations on three different evenings.

Reception from 5.30PM to 6:00PM, followed by the program from 6:00PM-9:00PM.

Register Now for these fun and social learning events!

Boulder Store, October 1, 2010

Denver Store, October 15, 2010

Park Meadows Store, October 22, 2010

With so many themes to choose from, you’ll have a tough time choosing which station’s session you’ll want to attend as so many will appeal to you! Each station will present a 20 minute program covering the basics of each topic and time for Q&A. Your Digital Diva Passport (provided) will be your entry for the drawings for our raffle giveaways provided by Mike’s Camera and our evening partners. 

Snack and beverages will be provided. Beauty Brands will offer beauty tips as well as host a makeup station prior to your close up at our complimentary portrait studio where you’ll receive a free 8x10 print a the conclusion of the evening along with other spectacular raffle giveaways from our event partners!

Bring your friends and enjoy some wine & cheese, and other treats & wonderful giveaways. This event is FREE, but as space is limited, pre-registration is required. Or email us for more info on registration for groups of 2 or more.

The Evening’s Program & Creativity Stations

Our event sponsors include

Date & Time:

Saturday June 26th, 2010

10:00 AM- 1:00 PM

Location:

Starz FilmCenter

900 Auraria Parkway

Denver, CO 80204