I have just had the most amazing two days of photography at what was called the Great Trentham Collaboration. Two Wellington photographer Shonty Rogan and Paul Maka organised a two day event that brought together 24 photographers and models, a dozen makeup artists, and six fashion designers, with clothes ranging from street wear to costumes. This was the second year that it had been run but this year was much bigger than before.

It was held at the Trentham Racecourse which is a very large complex with a multitude of rooms and areas to shoot in. It was so big that despite 12 photographers shooting at the same time there was very little competition for space, and when there was that was easily managed. We were originally told that we had full access to both of the grandstands but on the day the security guard needed to unlock the members stand was sick and so we only had the old grandstand to play in. I doubt that that caused much of an issue to anyone.

The old grandstand is four stories high including an amazing adandoned attic space, that practically everyone used at one stage. The windows faced the afternoon sun so were perfect for natural light, while other spaces were with easy reach of power supplies. All in all it was a great location.

The photographers were broken into two groups and each day was split into 4 1.25 hours shooting session. So at any one time 12 photographers and models were shooting, 12 photographers were on break downloading their images from the previous shoot, and 12 models were in makeup.

The two days went very smoothly with the only glitches being caused by models not being available due to illness. All photographers stuck to their allocated times and while the makeup in some cases took longer than allowed the time allocated for the photography was sufficient to make up the time.

It was a true collaboration of everyone’s effort with photographers also helping each other out either my being assistants or in allowing their gear or sets to be set up.

I have recently taken to wearing a fitbit and it told me that over the two days I walked nearly 33 kilometers, at lot of which was going between floors. It is no wonder that my legs were sore at the end of the weekend.

I have quite a lot of photos to process and keeping in my previous practise I will post about each separate session so that I can profile the images.