Occitanie
FRANCE INSIDEwith Tania Ruda
This is not a conventional photography workshop. Technique has its place, but the journey begins with how you see.
Duration
7 days / 6 nights
From
€4 600
All included
About the journey
Imagine waking in the South of France, not in a hotel but in our home: a two-hundred-year-old stone house filled with the scent of lavender and the cool morning air of Languedoc.
This is not a conventional photography workshop. Over six days, you live with us in the South of France and make photographs as part of the experience: at the market, over long dinners and during conversations that outlast the plan.
The journey resists advertising language. It feels more like an invitation than an offer.
FRANCE INSIDE is our home and our way of welcoming guests to the South of France: markets, villages, long lunches and the particular sense of time that shapes life here. We know the region not like a guidebook, but like our own kitchen, our vineyard and our neighbours.
For this journey, photographer and artist Tania Ruda joins us as creative director. She has stayed with us for years and brings a way of seeing that notices light, gesture, colour and chance, including all that is easily missed while hurrying towards the next frame.
You do not need to be a professional photographer. You only need to be curious about how you see.
From
€4 600
01
Day 1 · Enter
The first evening is deliberately unstructured: a long table, wine, dinner and time to get to know one another. The only aim is to feel that you have come to stay with people, not checked into somewhere. Old walls, vintage tableware, the garden, terraces and the particular light that exists here whether or not you are searching for it.
02
Day 2 · Look
With Tania, the conversation begins with a simple idea: photography starts not with technique, but with attention. The first assignment is to photograph five things you would normally pass without noticing. Then come an old town, a vintage market, coffee among locals and a walk beside the river. Photography is not separated from the day; it grows out of it.
03
Day 3 · Taste
Today, food and wine take the lead: a tasting at a wine estate, cooking with Slava and a long dinner prepared with the same attention as any other creative work. Tania's assignment is to photograph anticipation, the moments around the table when nobody is posing.
04
Day 4 · People and presence
Tania explores how a person inhabits a space: body, gesture, light and environmental portraiture. An invited model, a stylist and a decorator join us to build the visual world together. The day gives you strong material for your portfolio, while remaining a natural part of the journey rather than a separate exercise.
05
Day 5 · Get lost
One assignment and a great deal of freedom. Our 200-year-old southern house and everything around it become a space for your own way of seeing. Do not photograph France. Photograph how France feels to you.
06
Day 6 · Edit and tell a story
Each person selects ten to fifteen photographs from the six days. At our final dinner, over wine and conversation, the images are spread across the long table or shown on a projector. Everyone shares a short visual story, not a report on the trip, but a reflection of what they noticed and what stayed with them.
TANIA RUDA
Tania Ruda is our guest and the creative director of this journey. She studied painting and art history before coming to photography, so her eye has been shaped as much by cinema and painting as by the camera itself. We have known one another for years, which is why this collaboration feels natural: Tania leads the photographic programme, while we take care of the house, the table, the wine and the region we know as our own.
We are Natacha and Slava
We are Natacha and Slava. Natacha has worked with decoration and antiques for years and visits the brocante every Saturday; she knows where to look and which one of forty brooches might genuinely deserve a place at home. Slava moved from construction into restaurants and eventually to the South of France, where he cooks for his guests. He believes a house and a dinner are created in much the same way: with precision and care for details a guest may not consciously notice, but always feels.
Our home is not a set dressed in French style, but a real mas more than two hundred years old: stone walls, old beams, linen, vintage furniture, fireplaces and a saltwater pool. With no more than six guests, the journey remains personal. We can change the rhythm, stay longer where something captures our attention or leave out what nobody feels like doing that day.
Questions that usually come up
Who will you stay with? Will you have your own space? What if you want a quiet day at the house, or need us to accommodate children, a dog or particular dietary requirements? Most answers begin in the same place: the experience adapts to the people travelling, not the other way around.
What is included
All included- Accommodation, the full programme, local transfers, visits and tastings, all meals at home and in restaurants, and all drinks - including wine, Champagne and apéro.
What remains yours
- Travel to and from the meeting point, and your personal expenses.
If this journey feels right for you, write to us. We will talk through it personally.
Our house
Our mas is more than two hundred years old: stone walls, old beams, linen, vintage furniture, fireplaces and a saltwater pool. It is not a set styled to look French, but the house in which we actually live.
We welcome no more than six guests at a time. That keeps the experience personal and gives us the freedom to change the rhythm, linger where something captures our interest or leave out what does not feel right that day.
After a few days, the house becomes your point of return. You know where to take your morning coffee, which wine to open in the evening and who will pick up yesterday's conversation with you.
Rooms
Open any room to browse the photographs and see the details.
Patio
2 guests · private entrance
On the ground floor. A private entrance, private bathroom and a terrace with a white wrought-iron table under the olive tree.
Province
2 guests · private bathroom
Double bed. Toilet, shower and bath. Direct access to the terrace and pool.
Children’s room
An additional room with four beds for children.
The house, in detail
About us
Natacha and Slava
Natacha
An eye for beauty, antiques and atmosphere
An art historian with more than twenty years of experience in decoration and antiques, Natacha searches the brocantes every Saturday. She shows you where to look, how to recognise the age and character of an object, and which one of forty brooches is truly worth taking home. While Slava cooks, she sets the table and creates the atmosphere around it.
Slava
Good food, good wine and the art of hospitality
Slava spent fifteen years in construction before moving into restaurants, where he discovered that a house and a dinner are made in much the same way: with precision and care for details that guests may not notice, but always feel. Today, life means a mas in the South of France, a pool, the vineyards of Corbières and the guests for whom he cooks. Epicurus would have chosen friends, a garden and simple food; Bacchus would have added wine. Slava agrees with both.
