My husband and I took a 5 day tour with Gulin photography tours in August 2016. It was great. We were able to split up the tour by doing 2 days with Mia and then after 3 days on our own, Andy was our guide the following 3 days. They pick you up in a nice comfortable air conditioned van with their driver Isaak who we felt was a very safe driver. Depending on your interests, they set up photo experiences for you to get incredible shots of the area’s landscapes and also take you on home visits in the middle of the afternoon to places you would never be able to go to on your own. They would pick us up at 4:30am to take us to a beautiful spot (or two) to photograph dawn and sunrise and stay with us all day (minus a one or two hr break at our hotel in the afternoon) and then guide us to a great place to photograph the sunset. They live in Gulin so are very knowledgable of the area and speak impeccable Chinese, even though they are not originally from China.
I am not a very experienced photographer, and although they work a lot with seasoned photographers, they were very patient with me – especially Andy. He really helped me with getting correct exposures, and of course they know where all the great spots are to get those good shots. One of my favorite experiences was photographing the Cormorant fisherman (who they know personally) out on their boats. One morning we rode a motorized raft in early dawn, up the Li river to a ledge that we climbed to and set up our gear to photograph a Cormorant fisherman. It was magical and we got a lot of great shots. Another favorite was going to the Longji rice terraces. If were were shooting and a village person would walk by in their ethnic clothes, Andy would sometimes ask them if they would walk out into the rice terraces so we could take their photos in the field. We had one day on our own in the rice terraces after we were with Andy, and were a bit nervous about it because of the language so Andy graciously set us up with one of his models as a guide and sherpa (who we paid) to take us to spots Andy designed for us and to stay with us all day and lead us down the terraces to meet a hired car to drive us back to our Guilin hotel. We really felt well taken care of – they really go the extra mile!
We would highly recommend Guilin Photography Tours. They are first class!
Reviewed 16 January 2017
