You have reached the fourth and final instalment of my adventures at Barkzealand!
Did you miss Part One, Part Two or Part Three?
Our fourth shoot was in Arrowtown. This is the little place I mentioned in Part One. I spent most of the day here to kill some time before heading to the workshop, and there were just so many little areas I walked past wishing I had a dog to photograph. So, naturally, I was incredibly excited to hear it was one of our locations. I waited very patiently for day four to get back to the places I had scouted before, and of course day four came around, and it was raining!
The weather was a LOT less than ideal- cold, dark and wet. Essentially, the total opposite of what I’m used to. In any other situation I would’ve called off the shoot, but our group chose to push through (though we found out afterwards that we were the only group to do so, and the others were back home with cocktails in the hot tub!)
That’s one of the reasons these workshops are so good. They completely throw you out of your comfort zone, and you have to create magic with less than ideal conditions, or in ways you never do for a normal shoot (for example, working with a model for just 20 minutes.) Photography is a bit like lego, you can just keep adding skills to your skillset on top of what you’ve got, and on top again. These new skills help for your future shoots, even if it’s something you don’t need often, or a new way of doing something you already do, you’ve got it there. I don’t think you can ever know all there is to know, but you can just keep building your tower!
Our dog models in Arrowtown were Lexi, the most patient dog in the world, and Tiki and Harper. A HUGE shout out to their owners who also braved the rain with our crazy group of photographers.
I think we created a bit of magic, but I will leave that judgement up to you.
The next day, for our big finale, we all went to the top of Coronet Peak! Here we met 4 dog models for some photos with some epic mountain backdrops as the sun set and turned the grass gold. Bree, Ollie the collie and Castiel and Rusty.
And that was the end of a long, challenging, but completely and utterly FUN week in Queenstown with some of the best pet photographers in the world. The biggest thank you to the instructors, Nicole, Charlotte, Kaylee and Sam and of course fellow Barka’s. It was great to finally meet some of you in person and to see some of you again!
‘Till our next adventure!
