Benson and Grimm in the Lupins, New Zealand

During a trip to the Queenstown/Arrowtown area of New Zealand early last summer, Craig (my Unleashed Education co-founder) and I met up with our friends Merran and Mady at Glenorchy. You may have seen Benson in both our images previously - he's definitely our favourite dog model in the area and whenever we visit, we always meet up with him and his mum Merran for some fun dog photography adventures!

Grimm is one of Mady's dogs and he's also been in front of our lenses many times before as well. Both dogs are fantastic models and are very good at holding a stay, which is really helpful when shooting at a location like this where positioning is important. Those pretty flowers make for some great foreground blur, but also tend to get in the way of the subject very easily!

The lupins are actually not native to New Zealand and are considered an invasive pet species. While they are beautiful, they have a destructive effect on the delicate braided river ecosystems. In many places they have been eradicated, so we were lucky to find not one but two amazing spots where they were growing prolifically. Who knows how much longer they'll be around for!

Merran always brings us a beautiful little picnic so after we'd fuelled up for the shoot on yummy snacks, we began shooting.

I shot mainly with my new favourite lens - the Canon RF 135mm f1.8L - on my Canon R5.

The purpose of the shoot was to capture some behind the scenes footage for one of our pet photography courses on Unleashed Education. I absolutely love the way the images turned out. Benson and Grimm were their usual superstar selves and as always, fun adventures were had with good friends in what is probably my favourite area of the world!

Enjoy the images. 💜