Zoo Studio 2011 Quick Review

What a year 2011 was at Zoo Stu­dio!  Never a dull moment, but we weren’t quite pre­pared for the way the year started.

The Floods came just as we were plan­ning on being back in the office, instead we found our­selves out at the RSPCA Fair­field shel­ter help­ing in the post floods cleanup. The RSPCA used our pho­tos of the deves­ta­tion they suf­fered to help raise crit­i­cal funds in get­ting their facil­i­ties up and run­ning again, we were so pleased to help.

 

At the begin­ning of the year, we invested sig­nif­i­cantly in new stu­dio equip­ment which has enabled us to offer much more action and play pho­tog­ra­phy. Got a dog that just can’t sit still? A cat that likes to jump and twist and play? A bird that loves to stretch their wings and fly?

We can now cap­ture these images  in the stu­dio in pin shape details in a way we just couldn’t before.

The feed­back from our clients and the joy and smiles on their faces from our action, play­ful pho­tog­ra­phy has made it all worth it!

 

It was a big year for Zoo Stu­dio with Award in 2011. We entered sev­eral com­pe­ti­tions as we like to mea­sure our progress as a pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio against the very best pho­tog­ra­phy in Aus­tralia and from around the world.

Our pho­tos of birds in flight did very well, with a photo of Char­lie the Eclec­tus Par­rot win­ning us a Sil­ver with Dis­tinc­tion medal at the Aus­tralian Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­phy Awards.

As a result Ken was made an Asso­ciate of the Aus­tralian Insti­tute of Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­phy. This is a huge hon­our and one of which we were very proud.

 


We also entered the Photo Dis­trict News ‘Faces’ Com­pe­ti­tion, which is the only note­wor­thy inter­na­tional pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion with a spe­cific sec­tion for Ani­mal por­trai­ture. When we found out we had won the Ani­mal Por­trait cat­e­gory, we were excited, but then find­ing out we had won the over all Grand Prize Win­ner of the entire com­pe­ti­tion — well that was huge and more than just the icing on the cake. Sev­eral thou­sand pho­tog­ra­phers from all over the world entered, and we had won the Grand Prize from all categories!

Our pho­tos scored highly in the Inter­na­tional Loupe Awards, get­ting into the top 50 and win­ning 2 Sil­ver Award Medals and 5 Bronze Award medals.
We were also a final­ist in the Canon Cre­ative Asia competition.

 

In August we took our pho­tog­ra­phy on the road for the first time, vis­it­ing Mel­bourne. We were delighted to book out our avail­able ses­sions in just a cou­ple of hours. This pat­tern was repeated in Novem­ber too.

Beck and I both LOVE Mel­bourne, for the shop­ping, the eat­ing and of course the lovely peo­ple and pets we met while we were there.

 

To round the year of nicely we were invited by the RSPCA to join Pre­mier Anna Bligh and oth­ers on a train ride from their old shel­ter at Fair­field to their brand new state of the art facil­ity at Wacol. If you are in Bris­bane and haven’t yet seen it, you have to go for a look! Even if you aren’t look­ing for a new furry fam­ily mem­ber, they have a great store World for Pets where you can buy any­thing you need for your exist­ing pets, with all money going to the RSPCA. It is the best ani­mal shel­ter in the south­ern hemi­sphere and all Aus­tralia should be proud of it.

So what does 2012 have in store? Well as last year we have our plans, keep an eye on our blog and Face­book page to see how our plans unfold, but I am also sure some­thing sur­pris­ing will hap­pen again. We will be back to Mel­bourne and this year we will also be going to Syd­ney, Can­berra and Townsville. Do get in touch if you live there and are inter­ested in a session.

Have a great year and hope­fully see you in our stu­dio some­where in Australia!

Zoo Studio Joins HeARTs Speak

A com­pelling pho­to­graph can reach into the heart of a poten­tial adopter, and bring an ani­mal one step closer to a long-life out­side of a shelter.

HeARTs Speak is an inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion founded in the USA which pro­motes ani­mal adop­tion by con­nect­ing artists with shel­ters and ani­mal relief orga­ni­za­tions. Through the ser­vices of it’s pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher mem­bers vol­un­teer­ing their time, HeARTs Speaks hopes to increase the num­ber of ani­mals adopted and reduce the num­bers that are euth­a­nized and ulti­mately, to save and bet­ter the lives of ani­mals and people.

In early Decem­ber 2011 Zoo Stu­dio were super excited to become part of this grow­ing inter­na­tional team of ani­mal lovers and pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers. If you would like to find out more about HeARTs Speak visit their web­site here or join them on face­book here

Grand Prize Winner of PDN Faces Competition 2011

Zoo Stu­dio have got some REALLY excit­ing news!

We are the Grand Prize Win­ners for the PDN Faces 2011 Inter­na­tional pho­tog­ra­phy competition.

Photo Dis­trict News, the largest pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phy mag­a­zine in the USA, recently held an inter­na­tional pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion for por­trai­ture, the PDN Faces com­pe­ti­tion. We entered, as it is really the only inter­na­tional pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion of note that has a ded­i­cated Ani­mal Por­trai­ture cat­e­gory. There were thou­sands of entries, includ­ing some of the very very best pho­tog­ra­phers any­where, giv­ing us the chance to see how we are stak­ing up globally.

We won!! Not only did we win the ani­mal por­trai­ture cat­e­gory (the only Aus­tralian pho­tog­ra­pher to make the finals), but our photo was selected by the judges as the very best in the whole com­pe­ti­tion win­ning us the Grand Prize! All pho­tos entered came from our stan­dard client pho­tog­ra­phy ses­sions, not from spe­cially setup ses­sions with trained ani­mals.
Here is the win­ning image of Cheeky the Eclec­tus Par­rot, his Mum is very proud and so are we.

A Silver with Distinction and 2 Other Silvers at APPA Awards 2011

I’m so proud of my hus­band Ken Drake! We have just got the results back from this years Aus­tralian Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­phy Awards (APPAs), and Ken did excep­tion­ally well!

He scored 1 Sil­ver with Dis­tinc­tion, and two Sil­ver Medals. As a result, Ken has been made an Asso­ciate of the Aus­tralian Insti­tute of Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­phy (AIPP). This is a real honour!

The APPAs is the most impor­tant Aus­tralian pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion, and is the com­pe­ti­tion which every Aus­tralian pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher worth their salt enters. As we always do, these pho­tos all came from our nor­mal client photo ses­sions, not spe­cially setup ses­sions with trained animals.

Here are the pho­tos Ken entered and scored with.

We are super excited – our relationship with Greencross Vets has just gone National!

We have been work­ing with Green­cross Vets for the past cou­ple of years in Queens­land, in par­tic­u­lar clin­ics through­out Bris­bane and the Gold Coast area. In fact we have vis­ited and pho­tographed over 30 clin­ics and have had loads of fun meet­ing the won­der­ful Green­cross staff and their pets along the away. Dogs, cats, snakes and birds it’s been fan­tas­tic to see the bond that the staff share with their own furry and not so furry crit­ters and we feel priv­i­leged to have had the oppor­tu­nity to cap­ture these spe­cial moments  for the Green­cross fam­ily. You can check out some of our work with Green­cross Vets here

This week, Zoo Stu­dio signed a 3 year national alliance agree­ment with Green­cross Vets extend­ing our pho­tog­ra­phy ser­vices to Green­cross clin­ics and Green­cross clients in NSW, VIC and the greater Queens­land area.

Awe­some news for us, Green­cross Vets and Green­cross clients we think! The national group have over 14 clin­ics located in VIC and NSW and have big plans to expand their net­work of hos­pi­tals sig­nif­i­cantly in 2011 and beyond.

We are dou­bly pleased given that our own pets are part of the Green­cross fam­ily too! Thanks Michelle, thanks Josh and thanks Esther for your won­der­ful care of Bollo, Sophie, Clarence, Chris­t­ian and William!

So you see, that’s why we are super excited and we hope you are too — stay tuned for fur­ther infor­ma­tion and key dates for Zoo Stu­dio vis­its to Syd­ney and Mel­bourne in the com­ing months.

Oh… and more news to fol­low on some excit­ing raf­fles and com­pe­ti­tions we are about to launch soon! So join us on face­book for some of the very lat­est updates and announcements

From the Barkives — Holly

We have had some big per­son­al­i­ties in the stu­dio before, every pet we pho­to­graph has some­thing unique about them that I want to bring out in my pho­tos. Not often though am I imme­di­ately reminded of both an his­tor­i­cal fig­ure and one of my own furry fam­ily. Meet Holly!


Straight off I could tell that we were going to get along, just as long as I played by Holly’s rules. These rules pretty much revolved around not stop­ping, whether it was giv­ing belly rubs or treats — just keep ‘em com­ing! She has this abil­ity to turn a huge smile into a dis­ap­prov­ing frown with just the lift of an eye­brow, and I have to admit to teas­ing her just a bit to get this look for the cam­era. All this reminded me of our own best girl, Sophie, who runs our house with a paw of iron (espe­cially keep­ing those pesky kit­tens under con­trol). I felt so at home pho­tograph­ing Holly as a result.









Holly was by turn play­ful, smi­ley, bossy, hun­gry, inquis­i­tive, impa­tient, seri­ous, giv­ing, demand­ing, did I men­tion bossy?  Just as all senior dogs should be. Pup­pies can be like a blank can­vas, just wait­ing to gain life’s expe­ri­ences to fill out their per­son­al­i­ties. Old dogs are like an old mas­ter paint­ing, maybe peel­ing a bit at the edges but they have sur­vived the test of time, and their expe­ri­ence is writ­ten in their faces. I just love pho­tograph­ing old dogs.


My favourite photo is the first, with Holly star­ing dom­i­neer­ingly off into the dis­tance over the top of the cam­era. I pho­tographed her from a low posi­tion to empha­size the scale of her per­son­al­ity, and sud­denly she reminded me of Mag­gie Thatcher, glar­ing down her crit­ics at a polit­i­cal con­fer­ence in the early 80s, giv­ing her famous “The Lady is Not for Turn­ing” speech. I asked her mum to stand behind me and call her, Holly gave that look, and its cap­tured forever.



 

Old dogs are the best dogs.

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Photograph Pets

When I was grow­ing up, my Mum always had two dogs. I loved every sin­gle one of them, from the grumpy old Westie called Lassie, who would only put up with my tod­dler prob­ings because she was too arthritic to move; Sherry the bossy Lhasa Apso who just knew she ran the house; Polly the Staffie cross who would wee when excited and would play ball with me for hours in the gar­den; but espe­cially Heidi the Golden Retriever who we got as a puppy when I was 5, and was my con­stant com­pan­ion when I was grow­ing up. I don’t have a sin­gle photo of any of them.

How atti­tudes to ani­mals are chang­ing. As a kid I remem­ber the first time I stood up to my Dad, we were going on hol­i­day and Heidi and Sherry were due to go to the ken­nels. I thought this grossly unfair, and told him so. I saw them as mem­bers of our fam­ily who wanted to be with us, I clearly remem­ber their agi­ta­tion every time one of the fam­ily would walk off on their own. He, along with many adults of the time, saw them as just dogs who wouldn’t care where they were so long as they were fed. Was I being anthro­po­mor­phic and putting human emo­tions on to mere ani­mals? Or was I recog­nis­ing com­mon emo­tions that we mam­mals share?

When­ever I pho­to­graph pets, its so plain to me that we do share many com­mon emo­tions and char­ac­ter­is­tics. We are more to them than just a food source, and they are more to us than just beasts to keep out intrud­ers. Dogs are unique in their abil­ity to read human emo­tions, they are so in tune with us in a way that mere domes­ti­cated wolves can never be. Over the last 80,000 years we have evolved emo­tional bonds that amaze sci­en­tists, but just con­firm what dog lovers have said and thought for decades.

Every time I pick up the cam­era I am look­ing to cap­ture these com­mon con­nec­tions. I’m not sure if its the human­ity in the ani­mal I am try­ing to por­tray, or a reflec­tion of the ani­mal in us humans, but I do know we humans are closer to the ani­mals than some of us like to think. Fear, hap­pi­ness, greed, con­tent­ment, excite­ment, bore­dom, play­ful­ness; we have these emo­tions in com­mon, and these are the com­mon threads that I pick at in my photography.

Tra­di­tion­ally, pets have been por­trayed in art as either soft and cud­dly, or hard work­ing and loyal. Think of the cutesy pas­tel pup­pies in bas­kets, or the loyal gun dog stand­ing erect with bird in mouth. This doesn’t rep­re­sent my pets, how I inter­act with them or how I see them behave from day to day. For most of us our pets are key fam­ily mem­bers, our best mates, and this is how I aim to pho­to­graph them. I use human pho­tog­ra­phy tech­niques more in line with human por­trai­ture and fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy to empha­sise our commonality.

In the stu­dio, my first job is to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment where your pet can relax. These days I spend more time read­ing about ani­mal behav­iour than pho­tog­ra­phy; the bet­ter I am at inter­act­ing with my sub­jects on their terms, the bet­ter a pho­tog­ra­pher I become. Whilst unveil­ing their char­ac­ters, I sculpt with my lights to empha­sise their unique attrib­utes. An ear here, a quiff there, noses, paws, tails, brightly coloured feath­ers and leath­ery scales, we build up the por­trait one expo­sure at a time. As we play, my cam­era ready, I wait for the moment I feel the char­ac­ter and pose are ideal; I press the shut­ter as the final por­trait is revealed before my lens.

Many peo­ple ask why I pho­to­graph in a stu­dio rather than out­side in a  park or beach, or in someone’s home. I pre­fer the free­dom of the stu­dio; my sub­jects have no dis­trac­tion other than me and their fam­ily, and are free to behave as they wish. No strangers get­ting in the way, no other ani­mals dis­turb­ing our con­nec­tion, no leash to con­strain them, no bad weather to spoil the light. The light, my main tool, is always per­fect in the stu­dio. Of course spe­cial moments hap­pen in their own home, but peo­ple have their own cam­eras these days for those types of pho­tos. What we strive to cre­ate is unique and spe­cial and can only hap­pen in the right con­di­tions. Our por­traits sit on the walls and cof­fee tables, beside your own per­sonal photos.

Pho­tograph­ing pets in a stu­dio, with human light­ing tech­niques and human emo­tions; that’s what I love.

From the Barkives — Cadbury

Cad­bury came bounc­ing into the stu­dio in June, with her older sis­ter Elly. She imme­di­ately set­tled in, check­ing it all out and get­ting her nose into every­thing (includ­ing my bag of treats!). Its always great to get a bit of puppy love in the stu­dio! These are my favourite pho­tos from the ses­sion, I hope you like them.

Although she loved the liver treats, she responded espe­cially well to noises and a squeeky toy got us the lovely head tilt in the first photo. The other inquis­i­tive expres­sions fol­lowed as I went through my farm yard repetoire, but I defi­nately think the cat noises were her favourite. They learn so young…!

Thanks to Cadbury’s Mum and Dad for bring­ing Cad­bury and Elly in, we will have to do a spe­cial on Elly to!

Photos from our Mini Break!

We just spent a few days camp­ing at Arat­ula, near Cun­ning­hams Gap, and of course we took the dogs with us. It was great to get away, and we really were away from it all with­out the usual run­ning hot water and toi­let block on hand. Won­der­ful!  It was REALLY cold so we slept all cud­dled together in a heap in the mid­dle of the tent, hop­ing not to have to go for a walk in the mid­dle of the night.

It was a few days of ‘firsts’, espe­cially for our new boy Bollo. First time camp­ing for Bollo, first time sit­ting around a camp fire for Bollo,  first time swim­ming for Bollo, first time pulling Beck head­first into the water for Bollo. Yes he had lots of fun ;-) Sophie also enjoyed her­self, get­ting in the water and rolling in mud, as well as see­ing off a wan­der­ing Staffie (she looked so tough in her pink pyja­mas!). We decided that she was find­ing her ‘inner dog’ (too much time spent sleep­ing on the sofa, some­times she for­gets she isn’t human!).

Bollo has also just com­pleted his Urban Basics train­ing course with our friends Danielle and Paul at Urban Dog Train­ing. When he arrived a cou­ple of months ago from the RSPCA he didn’t even know sit, now he can walk on a loose lead, sit, stay, and my favourite of all ‘leave-it’. I dropped some chicken on the floor yes­ter­day RIGHT under his nose, and before he could wolf it down I said ‘leave it’ and he just sat and looked at me. Such a proud dad! Had to give him the chicken any­way of course, plus a bit extra for being a good boy. He still can’t fetch beer though so more work to be done.

If you get a chance, please vote for us in the Paws and Claws Awards for best pet pho­tog­ra­pher! We are run­ning a com­pe­ti­tion as a way of say­ing thankyou for your vote, more details here, you could win a fan­tas­tic Canon DSLR cam­era, with a lens, and a les­son on how to use it from yours truly. Fantastic!

Win a Canon EOS 1000D & Private Photography Lesson

Zoo Stu­dio is very excited to announce that we have been nom­i­nated for the 4th Annual Paws and Claws Awards 2010 - as First Class Pet Pho­tog­ra­pher. 

To cel­e­brate we thought it would be a great idea to run a fab­u­lous com­pe­ti­tion in con­junc­tion with these Awards. That way all our clients and sup­port­ers get a chance to win some­thing too, when you vote for Zoo Stu­dio as First Class Pet Photographer! 

It’s the Peo­ples Choice Awards and EVERY Vote counts. So, if you love what we do and would like to be in with a chance to win one of two great prizes, please get your vote in now. Oh and don’t for­get to tell your friends and fam­ily to vote too! Vot­ing is online, fill out the Paws and Claws vot­ing form here    Vot­ing closes on 26th August 2010.

See Terms and Con­di­tions on this Com­pe­ti­tion for fur­ther information

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