EchucaPalooza II - The Return to Palooza

Its been 12 months since Creative Photo Workshops ran its first location based event. This time last year, we found ourselves in Echuca in northern Victoria and had a fabulous weekend of photography. It was so popular we decided to run it again! Actually, we decided to run it two weekends in a row...

But, what is it with us and flooding rains? When we were in New Zealand running our MeaWannaShootalotta event, Queenstown decided to flood for the first time in decades. The same thing happened in Echuca. The weather reports indicated that the area was to receive about 150mm of rain over the weekend. I don't know how many millimetres actually fell, but all day Saturday saw us dodging some heavy rain and our sunrise shoot was a washout. It seems we are like that Crowded House song. Yes, we always bring the weather with us. Although it was perfectly sunny when we left Melbourne! What's with that?

Nonetheless, we managed to help our group of wonderful friends and fellow photographers achieve some creative images by using an old dilapidated and abandoned schoolhouse in Mathoura. It was a lifesaver, as were our models, Meg and Maria. Meg is a local Echuca girl and a crazy redhead with colourful clothing and personality. Maria is a young Vivien's model who is just starting out on what I hope will be a long and wonderful modelling career. The combination of these two lovely models, some off camera flash and our CPW smoke machine allowed all to create images that they hadn't planned on. Neither had we, actually! When the weather gets in the way of your plans, you have to come up with new ideas for your customers - and quickly!

Photography is much about problem solving. Any experienced photographer will tell you that. Rarely does everything go to plan and when it doesn't you have to come up with other options. Wedding photographers know this only too well. Landscape photographers will camp out in a location for long periods of time waiting for the right light to adorn the scene that they have wanted to capture. Without the right conditions, they either have to change their vision, or wait it out. We didn't have that kind of time, so we simply changed our vision. Its a good lesson for all photographers to learn. When things don't go as you plan, change the plan.

Sunday morning gave us a warm welcome with a rain-free sunrise. We headed for the old Port of Echuca and enjoyed photographing its beautifully restored and empty streets. It was a relief to be finally free of the rain and the day ahead was beautiful. We were able to stick to much of our Sunday itinerary, finishing off our weekend's shoot in the same abandoned shearing shed we used last year. What a great location this is! The light in this building is wonderful and its textures and warm timber tones are a dream location. I would love to photograph a real wedding here. If I were an Echuca based wedding photographer I would try and use that location as often as possible! As it was , we had a 'bride' along with us. Actually, we were accompanied by our two models, plus a couple of local identities who brought their wonderful faces along for our lenses. There was Chris, a local timberman who has a great face and runs the local sawmill and Todd, a local who donned an Akubra and a Drizabone and posed wonderfully in the shearing shed. We even had Marge the Dog model for us. She proved to be a rather popular subject! 

Due to popular demand, this coming weekend will see us running the same event again, aptly named EchucaPalooza 2.5 . There are still a couple of places left if you are interested! Click here if you think you might like to come!