M D Morgan4–8 March 2027
A five-day workshop that ends on the loudest night of the Balinese year, and then stops dead for the quietest day on earth.
This is the March departure of the Bali photography workshop. Same six places, same price, same teaching — but the week is built around a date the island sets rather than one I choose, so it is worth its own page.
Nyepi is the Balinese new year, and it is observed by stopping. For twenty-four hours nobody works, travels, cooks over a fire or lights a lamp after dark. Nobody goes outside. The airport closes completely — no arrivals, no departures, for a full day. Streets that are never empty are empty. In 2027 it falls on Tuesday 9 March.
The night before is the opposite. Each village builds an ogoh-ogoh: a giant papier-mâché demon, months in the making, carried through the streets on bamboo poles by dozens of young men, spun at every crossroads to confuse the spirits inside it, and then burned. It is loud, chaotic, lit by flame and phone torches, and it is one of the great photographic nights anywhere in Asia.
The days run east and north as the standard workshop does — Karangasem, the north coast, the Munduk highlands — but the sequence is arranged so we come back down into Denpasar as the preparations peak.
Days 01–03
Ceremony, market and street work across the east and north, with the evening review sessions the workshop always runs. Through this week the banjar compounds are finishing their effigies in the open — a subject in itself, and one almost nobody photographs because it happens before the visitors arrive.
Day 04
The purification processions to the sea. Villages walk their temple objects to the water, in white, often for kilometres. Long lenses are useless here and short ones are a test of nerve.
Day 05
The last day is spent on the parade — the afternoon assembling, then the effigies moving after dark. We work it as a group and split up as it develops. This is the only night of the week with no review session, for the obvious reason.
Day 06
The workshop is over, and nobody can leave. We spend the day inside editing the week — the best editing conditions I know of, because there is nothing else on the island to do and nothing outside making a sound.
This is the one practical thing to get right. Ngurah Rai airport is shut for the whole of 9 March. Book your flight home on 10 March 2027 or later, and budget one extra night beyond the workshop.
Treat that night as the reason to come rather than the cost of coming. Most people who visit Bali never see it silent. There is no traffic noise, no music, no aircraft, and after dark no lights — which means a sky most visitors to this island never see either.
You cannot photograph out on the street during Nyepi, and we do not. That is the rule and it is kept by everyone, visitors included. The pictures from that day, if any, are made from where you are staying.
A$3,500 per person, the same as every other departure — five days of tuition, your own room for five nights, all transport, all meals, entrance fees and donations, guides, and the review and editing sessions. Flights, visa, insurance and the extra Nyepi night are not included.
Six places. A A$500 deposit holds one, with the balance due eight weeks before. The departure runs with four people or more, and that call is made eight weeks out — before the balance is due and while flights can still be changed.
Reserve a place on this departure
Or read the full workshop page — the teaching, the locations and the other three 2027 departures.