In July 2021 I travelled down to Invercargill to be the host on a Photographic Society of New Zealand (PSNZ) dance workshop. At the time I was president of PSNZ, and was also not working, so when I discovered that the Southland Photographics Society had their meeting on the Thursday before I travelled down early to visit them. That meant that I had the free day on the Friday.

On a previous visit to Invercargill I had discovered an area of Queens Gardens called the Stumpery. They have arranged large tree stumps into an area that you can walk around and through. Essentially it is a botanical piece of art.

From that visit I knew that I wanted to shoot there so in addition to packing my usual clothes, and gear for the workshop, I packed several lens of fabric and a lightstand.

Via a Facebook modelling group I reached out to see if there were any models interested in shooting with me on the Friday and Raj replied. We arranged to meet at the entrance to the gardens and made our way to the Stumpery.

After sum initial shoots in the centre of the Stumpery we moved to the edge and started to bring in the longer pieces of fabric. She was keen enough to climb up on the structures. By this stage we were losing the natural light so I wedged the speed light after the side to add more light.

Moved around the gardens to an area with a Japanese Asian influence and I used the archway to pose her. I covered the speed light with an orange gell to fake golden light.

For the final set of images moved to water feature and I use the second piece of lace that I had brought down. Again I used a bare speedlight to add a little bit of light to the image.

One of the things that’s important when shooting at any location is to look at how changing your angle can change the image. In the images above and below Raj is essentially in the same location but I have moved to a different shooting point and in the process change the feel of the images.

It was a good shoot and I was pleased with the result.