For years I’ve always wanted to go a Bark pet photography retreat. They have been all over the world – Spain, France, Costa Rica, New Zealand… but it’s difficult for me to travel and it wasn’t to be.
The retreats are run by crazy talented photographers – Dog Breath Photography, Charlotte Reeves and Nicole Begley. If you know anything about dog photography you will know those names. You basically go live in a fancy house with them for a week, learn loads and photograph dogs in the most amazing locations – a dream right?
You can imagine my excitement when I found out it was coming to Scotland and called Barklander! I signed up straight away, super excited that 2020 was the year I was going to finally get to go to a Bark retreat.
But then Covid hit and it was rescheduled for 2021. That wasn’t to be either, pesky coronavirus. Finally it was definitely happening in 2022 but with Covid still raging I couldn’t go stay in a house with a bunch of strangers and then come home to my clinically vulnerable wife, so it wasn’t to be for me yet again.
I did however get to be a small part of Barklander. My studio was the first ever field trip destination on a Bark event.
The week two students came my studio to see how I work and how I edit my images. How cool is that? When I say students I don’t mean people just at the start of their pet photography journey, these are all people will established pet photography business and they came to me to learn things from me! I still have a hard time with the idea that my wee studio in Central Scotland is so well respected around the world that other pet photographers want to come here to learn.
When they came to me we split it up into two groups, first group came in the morning and I had the lovely Frankie and Alfie as models.
Then in the afternoon Max the boxer came to help out!
It was really nice to talk about what I do in the studio with other pet photographers.
I did get some other opportunities to hang out with the Barklander people. I went location scouting with them in Glencoe, went up to the house on the edge of Loch Tay while they were photographing dogs in the grounds and done the tourism thing in Edinburgh.
If you would like to go to the next retreat Barkelona you can apply here.
Oh then I got a lovely surprise in the post…
