The Masterclasses by National Geographic Traveller (UK) are back this week with three digital one-hour writing and photography sessions.

Last night, the first in the series took place, with a class on writing an award-winning travel feature, which discussed everything from beginnings and endings to quotes and structure. Another class focused on creating an award-winning travel feature, where the panellists shared tips and tricks on how they got the photographs for their best features.

Here are a couple of the top tips from the first day:

Travel writing
When starting to write a travel feature, Emma Thomson, a multi-award-winning writer and regular contributor to the magazine, advises putting your notes to one side and seeing what comes to mind. “[Think about] whether there was a shocking moment, a thrilling moment, a funny moment… because most likely that’s going to be the intriguing start you want to hook your readers with,” she explained. “If it was memorable for you, it’s going to be intriguing for them.”

Travel photography
Documentary and travel photographer Ben Roberts recommends you take on personal projects to help develop your way of seeing. This will allow you to develop a personal photographic style that will, in turn, help you get commissioned.

Tickets are still available for Wednesday’s sessions. Click here to learn more and here to buy tickets.

If you have paid for any of the classes and not been able to attend them you need not worry, upon purchasing a ticket you will receive an email from us with the link to watch the recording of the class that you have purchased.

If you are interested in watching the classes but can’t make the live event you can pay for the video here.

Each class is £10 or £50 for all six. The links to the videos will be emailed to you upon payment.

The recordings will be available to watch until 23 February (and from 11pm onwards from the night of the event).