My 2013 Trip to Cuba

10 Days with Lee Frost group

I first learned about Lee Frost, a photographer and tour guide, in a photography magazine I subscribed to. He’s based in the UK, and I wrote to ask if my living in Denmark would cause any logistical issues if I were to join any of his tours. He answered that he has people attend who live all over the world. At the time, he had availability for trips to Burma, Cuba, Namibia, and Iceland.

Ironically, when we were still married, Christine wanted to visit Cuba, but I had been too nervous to do so. It seemed like a dangerous place to visit, given how little either of us know about the country. I could picture all manner of scary things that probably only happen in films.

Lee, however, had been doing a tour in Cuba for 10 years at the time and I correctly assumed that I would both be and feel safe visiting with his group. Plus, since Lee takes amazing photographs, the trip promised to improve both my photography and travel skills.

I’m quite pleased with the pictures I took on this trip, although I feel that Lee deserves a lot of the credit for them.

Not that Lee spent time teaching. His approach was more “lead a horse to water”. Once at a good location, he left it up to us to find our own pictures. Occasionally, if I happened to be near him when walking through a town, I might see what he was shooting and take inspiration from that, but otherwise, I liked that he did not attempt to impose his style or philosophy on us.

I’m certain, however, that without his guidance, I would never have found so many interesting subjects at the right time of day to ensure great natural light. This often meant getting up before dawn and having breakfast after a few hours of shooting, and knowing when to take a break from the boring mid-day sun.

I learned a lot about how to arrange my day when travelling solo.

I was also happy to learn that the people in Cuba were very kind to photographers. As Lee put it, they live in a beautiful country and they are proud of it. We never encountered any complaints for taking pictures. It was especially wonderful to take pictures of children without anyone becoming distrustful. As one of my fellow travellers from England put it, as we took pictures of the uniformed children making their way to school, “We’d be put in jail for doing this back home!”

I ended up joining Lee on trips to Morocco and Iceland (in the winter), both places that I didn’t feel comfortable travelling solo at the time. I took a lot of inspiration from his work when I planned my solo trip to Namibia.