Dates & Prices |
BOOK HOLIDAY NOW |
Dates: 9th – 15th June 2027
Price: £1,995* Places available
Single Room Supplement: £0
Deposit: £250 per person
* Price will be confirmed end of August 2026
Price Includes: All meals, 7 nights accommodation, ground transport, services of the guides, tour report
Not Included: Flights, travel insurance, drinks and any other personal items
Leaders: Oliver Wright & Alice Hunter
Group Size: Minimum of 4 and a maximum of 8 guests plus 2 leaders
Grade: Very easy slow pace with short walks & photography workshops
Conservation Donation: Butterly Conservation Europe
Holiday Highlights
- Enjoy finding & photographing a wonderful range of minibeasts & other exciting wildlife on this unique tour
- Learn about & practice macro & other techniques under the guidance of professional photographer Oliver Wright
- Tuition & guidance to suit all levels – including basics of macro photography, lighting, composition, stacking, artistic macro concepts & techniques & more
- Explore a wildlife rich part of north Greece and discover a treasure trove of macro subjects
- Diverse range of habitats include mountains, meadows, forests, lakes & alpine pastures
- Relaxed pace and itinerary, designed specifically for photography
- One centre tour so unpack once, relax & start shooting!
- Includes a relaxing boat trip on Lake Kerkini – great for some added bird photography!
A fun & exciting photography adventure in Greece with macro master Oliver Wright!
If you love to see the natural world close up, in all its amazing technicolour detail this is the ideal holiday for you! The tranquil and verdant area of Lake Kerkini and the surrounding mountains are the perfect place – full of butterflies & beautiful bugs ready to provide you with a feast of macro photography! The area we visit is rich in diverse habitats within a relatively small area, making it a prime location for finding biodiversity. The habitats we’ll explore include Lake Kerkini and associated wetlands, flowery hillsides, alpine pastures and emerald green mountains covered in forests of beech, hornbeam, oak, black pine and oriental plane. In turn this diversity supports an equally rich flora and fauna, thus a wide range of different and exciting macro opportunities! There can be dragonflies and tree frogs close to the water, orchids and other flowers in the hillside meadows, along with a beautiful palette of colourful butterflies. And everywhere we go there is the chance to find other fascinating insects and other invertebrates, like praying mantids, longhorn beetles, katylids, spiders and much more. The holiday has been designed to maximise the opportunities for macro photography by staying in one wildlife rich place for the week, where we can spend as much time as possible outside with our cameras. Our home for the week will be a comfortable hotel, close to Lake Kerkini. It provides the perfect base for our week of relaxing and fun photography in the wide open spaces and mountains that surround the beautiful Lake. Oliver will offer advice and suggestions on how to capture intimate and interesting portraits of butterflies, spiders, insects and other invertebrates in their natural habitats. The kind of techniques that will be covered include: basics of macro photography; handheld stacking; working with natural light and tools to help optimise it; working with off-camera flash; composing your macro shots and digital workflow with Photoshop (you will need to bring your own laptop with software if you want help and advice on digital workflows). We will also have a second leader, who is an excellent all-round naturalist and photographer and who will help you to get more from the tour and understand the flora and fauna of the area. Our daily schedule is kept flexible as we’ll want to take account and full advantage of the local conditions, which can be changeable due to weather, altitude and so on. We will however be intending to run numerous early morning and evening sessions, to take advantage of some great light and the fact that a lot of our macro subjects will be less active and thus easier to photograph and practice certain techniques, i.e. stacking. The potential species to photograph are almost endless and there are always new discoveries made on each trip, but here is a selection of subjects and species that we have a chance to encounter… (check out the gallery for some example photos). Southern White Admiral, Little Tiger Blue, Camberwell Beauty, Scarce Swallowtail, Eastern Festoon, Black-veined White, Eastern Bath White, Iolas Blue, Large Tortoiseshell, Nettle-Tree Butterfly, Marbled Fritillary, Spotted Fritillary, Queen of Spain Fritillary, Lattice Brown, Yellow-banded Skipper, Woodland Ringlet, Purple-shot Copper, Sooty Copper, Southern Comma & more. Spurge Hawk-moth, Giant Peacock, Forester, Wood Tiger, Cream-spot Tiger, Yellow Underwing, Five-Spot Burnet, Nine-Spotted Moth, Six-Spot Burnet, Transparent Burnet, Puss Moth, Small Emperor Moth, Emperor Moth, Hummingbird Hawk-Moth, Olive Bee Hawk, Narrow-Bordered Bee Hawk & more. Green-Eyed Hawker, Blue Chaser, Broad-bodied Chaser, Southern Skimmer, Red-veined Darter, Balkan Goldenring, Lesser Emperor, Broad Scarlet, Yellow-winged Darter, Small Pincertail, Beautiful Demoiselle, Banded Demoiselle, Bladetail, Green Snaketail & more. Dice Snake, Balkan Whip Snake, Salamander, European Glass Lizard, Common Wall Lizard, European Green Lizard, Hermann’s & Spur-Thighed Tortoise, European Terrapin, Green Toad, Common Toad, Tree Frog, Eastern Spadefoot, Yellow-Bellied Toad, Marsh Frog & more. Ladybird Spider, Red-bellied Jumping Spider, European Praying Mantis, Fasciated Conehead Mantis, Balkan Spoon-Winged-Lacewing, Rose Chafer, Giant Centipede, Predatory Bush Cricket, Violet Carpenter Bee, various Robber Flies, Longhorn beetles & many more!Butterflies
Moths
Dragonflies & Damselflies
Reptiles & Amphibians
Other insects, beetles, spiders, grasshoppers etc
Please note: The following itinerary is subject to changes in terms of running order or content, depending on local weather and other factors. We will use our experience and local knowledge to maximise the wildlife you will see and be able to photograph.
Day 1: Arrival and transfer to our hotel close to Lake Kerkini. Afternoon excursion to sites at the northern end of the lake for our first taste of the areas habitats and wildlife we’ll be photographing.
Day 2: Mandraki harbour and environs + the eastern embankment area of Lake Kerkini.
Day 3: Western side of the lake and surroundings.
Day 4: Lailias Mountain, various habitats and altitudes.
Day 5: Mount Belles at the northern end of Lake Kerkini. Exploration of habitats at various altitudes.
Days 6: Magical macro mystery tour! We’ll take you to secret locations we’ve discovered over the years. A chance to explore the countryside and find many macro photography subjects!
Day 7: Transfer to Thessaloniki airport for homeward flights.
Oliver Wright is is a professional photographer, who left a corporate office job behind him in 2014. Now he works as an arctic landscape/aurora photographic guide during the winter period and then in the summer time completes his own projects and undertakes other photographic guiding and teaching. Oliver is a passionate specialist in macro photography and has developed his own techniques for handheld stacking images, which produce a very unique view into the insect world. The technique is also used in other photographic genres. He is very much an outdoors/wildlife person so is feeling he has definitely made the right career move!
Oliver often gives talks for Canon about his photography and has represented them at some major events, talking on the main stage at ‘The Photography Show 2019’ and at the BirdFair, the largest wildlife event of its kind in the world, in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022. Oliver has also been a judge for the BBC Countryfile Photography Calendar Competition and appeared on the program.
Jessica A, 2023: My holiday with Greenwings exceeded my expectations. The guides were knowledgeable and approachable, and I appreciated that we spent lots of time in each location so I could explore the “mini-beasts” there and observe their behavior, not just zoom in for a quick shot!
Michaela, June 2019…Fantastic holiday! Matt was so helpful and knowledgeable and certainly knew where to look for photo subjects. Matt was always on hand to help if you needed it and I learnt good photo techniques from him. Great locations, lots of insects to see but also lovely scenery, birds, buffalo etc. We visited lots of lovely locations and I will always remember this holiday with happy memories, thank you!
Caroline, June 2018…I learned so much on my first Greenwings Wildlife Holiday! Macro specialist Matt was inspiring, encouraging and patient. He knew just where to look to find the best creatures and offered composition, technical and entomological insights in a way that made it all feel accessible. I appreciated his enthusiasm and consideration for the photography subjects. The trip was well worth the journey from the Pacific Northwest!
Malcolm, June 2018… Very good range of habitats with a wide variety of insects and arachnids. Knowledgeable and helpful guides, coupled with, in my experience, above average accommodation and food. The boat trip was an added bonus for those interested in birds and your subsequent help with identifications was much appreciated. Overall great value!
