Dates & Prices

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Dates: 22nd – 29th June 2025

Price: £1,995 Places available

Single Room Supplement: £175

Deposit: £200 per person

Price Includes: Accommodation, all meals, ground transport, services of guides, any entry fees

Not Included: International & internal flights, travel insurance, drinks and any other personal items

Conservation Donation: Butterfly Conservation

Leader(s): Oliver Wright and local guide

Group Size: Minimum of 4 and a maximum of 6 guests plus 2 leaders

Holiday Highlights

Enjoy a week of macro photography workshops in the field with expert professional photographer Oliver Wright
Stunning landscape of mountains, alpine & subalpine meadows, forest, rivers, marshes and more – home to an extraordinary diversity of butterflies, dragonflies, spiders, beetles, grasshoppers, crickets, praying mantises and lots of other wonderful wildlife!
Small group to ensure each participant gets ample assistance with their photography from Oliver
Includes an experienced local naturalist guide to help find & identify a wide variety of wildlife
2 centre tour, designed to maximise potential number and diversity of macro photography subjects
Relaxed pace and itinerary, designed specifically for photography
Tuition & guidance to suit all levels – including basics of macro photography, lighting, composition, stacking & more

Macro photography tour with professional photographer Oliver Wright, in wildlife rich Bulgaria!

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Holiday Guide

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.

Join professional photographer Oliver Wright for a week of macro photography, focusing on the microcosmos world in wildlife rich Bulgaria!

If you love to see the natural world close up, in all its amazing detail this is the ideal holiday for you! The mountains, lakes, rivers and meadows of Bulgaria are the perfect place – full of butterflies, bugs and beautiful flowers, for a feast of macro photography!

The holiday has been designed to maximise the opportunities for macro photography, covering a wide range of different habitats and an equally wide range of photographic subjects.

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 – which we will spend a fair amount of time on. 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.

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 local expert naturalists with us for the duration of the entire tour.

We’ll stay in two areas, starting with 3 nights in the small town of Dragoman, northwest of Sofia. From our base we’ll head out to explore local marshes, meadows, mountains and rivers. We should find a plentiful supply of photo subjects, including numerous butterfly and dragonfly species. On the fourth day we’ll head south to the Gotse Delchev area via Kresna Gorge, to stay in this area for the remaining four nights of the tour. We’ll spend more time in the mountains, helping to add to the list of subjects we’ll see.

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 is almost endless and there are always new discoveries made on each trip, but we have added a selection of species to the itinerary that we have a good chance to encounter.

We run a butterflies & flowers tour 4 days after this one ends and usually see 110+ butterfly species on it! So, if you fancy extending your stay in Bulgaria and seeing even more that this wonderful country has to offer then you can easily sign up for both trips. The details for the second tour can be found here

Contact us now to find out more or reserve places on what we expect to be a very popular tour!

Day 1: Arrival at Sofia Airport and a short transfer of about 1 hour west to the town of Dragoman. Accommodation in Hotel Dragoman for three nights.

Day 2: Dragoman Marshes and Chepan Mountains.

Butterflies: Southern Festoon, Berger’s Clouded Yellow, Eastern Wood White, Black-veined White, Green-underside Blue, Silver-spotted Blue, Adonis Blue, Osiris Blue, Balkan Zephyr Blue, Reverdine’s Blue, Amanda’s Blue, Weaver’s Fritillary, Spotted Fritillary, Marsh Fritillary, Woodland Ringlet, Russian Heath, Oberthuer’s Grizzled Skipper, Safflower Skipper

Dragonflies: Variable Damselfly, White-legged Damselfly, Azure Damselfly, Norfolk Hawker, Hairy Dragonfly, Small Bluetail, Blue Emperor, Lesser Emperor

Day 3: Ponor Mountain and Iskar River.

Butterflies: Black Hairstreak, Chequered Blue, Lesser Purple Emperor, Hungarian Glider, Niobe Fritillary, Marbled Fritillary, Delatin’s Grayling, Large Wall Brown, Lattice Brown, Tessellated Skipper, Tufted Marbled Skipper

Dragonflies: Beautiful Demoiselle, Banded Demoiselle, Southern Skimmer

Day 4: Transfer to Gotse Delchev area via Kresna Gorge. Accommodation in Belite Skali hotel complex for four nights.

Butterflies: Scarce Swallowtail, Southern Small White, Krueper’s Small White, Ilex Hairstreak, Little Tiger Blue, Eastern Baton Blue, Southern White Admiral, Common Glider, Balkan Marbled White, the Hermit, Lesser Spotted Fritillary, Lulworth Skipper

Dragonflies: Banded Demoiselle, Balkan Goldenring, Sombre Goldenring, Club-tailed Dragonfly, Green-eyed Hooktail

Other Insects: Nemnoptera sinuata, Palpares libelluloides, Empusa fasciata

Day 5: Ilinden and Gaytaninovo аrea.

Butterflies: Eastern Festoon, Freyer’s Purple Emperor, Lesser Fiery Copper, Sloe Hairstreak, Lang’s Short-tailed Blue, Reverdine’s Blue, Adonis Blue, Meleager’s Blue, Escher’s Blue, Anomalous Blue, Great Banded Grayling, Sandy Grizzled Skipper

Other Insects: Bradyporus dasypus, Argiope bruennichi

Day 6: Slavyanka Mountains.

Butterflies: Mountain Small White, Berger’s Clouded Yellow, Large Blue, Meleager’s Blue, Chapman’s Blue, Nettle-tree Butterfly, Cardinal Fritillary, Balkan Marbled White, Balkan Grayling, Oriental Meadow Brown, Yellow-banded Skipper

Dragonflies: Balkan Goldenring, Scarce Chaser, Keeled Skimmer, Southern Darter

Day 7: Southern Pirin Mountains.

Butterflies: Apollo, Balkan Copper, Mountain Argus, Mazarine Blue, Turquoise Blue, False Eros Blue, Heath Fritillary, Great Sooty Satyr, Northern Wall Brown, Orbed Red-underwing Skipper

Dragonflies: Sombre Goldenring

Day 8: Departure from Sofia Airport

Please note: The species listed represent a selection that we will look for and see during the holiday. It by no means is a definitive list and there will be many more macro subjects to discover! The itinerary is also subject to change depending on weather and season and any other relevant factors. We will only make changes to benefit guests and help them get the best possible experiences from the holiday.