I write my roundup of 2024 from a little apartment in Paris looking out over bustling streets shimmering with lights reflecting on the wet concrete and I see a beagle, nose to the ground as they always are. It’s pretty typical for me this time of year to be somewhere other than home, seeing dogs wherever I go!

But despite all the adventures I’ve been having with the Unleashed Workshop in Arrowtown, Barkjavik in Iceland, where I was a guest instructor, and my multitude of Dogs of the World shoots in several countries, 2024 has been a year of major challenges and setbacks. But here we are, almost at the end of it and I made it!

Our awesome group of Students at the Unleashed Workshop in Arrowtown.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again; it seems to me that as I get older, life’s highs are higher and the lows are lower. In April we had to say goodbye to our sphynx cat, Millefeuille. As I reflect on the year, and the time that has passed since, I still struggle with the fact that he is no longer with us. He still frequently visits me in my dreams and on the odd occasion I could have sworn I’ve heard him calling from another room. Grief is a funny thing isn’t it.

As August rolled around it was that time of year again for the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography IRIS award and annual conference. The awards is a print competition and I love preparing my images to print each year. This year I managed to achieve two gold awards which, after working on it since 2015, meant that I earned the distinction of NZIPP Grand Master of Photography.

Here I am with my shiny new white Grand Master ribbon and the Curtis-Poole Memorial Award for best judge at this years NZIPP Iris Awards.

I’ve also been in physio recovering from a shoulder/neck injury for 18 months and, in October, my symptoms worsened which resulted in me being rushed in for surgery to replace a disc in my cervical spine. Right at the point where I’d just launched the crowdfunding campaign for my Dogs of the World book on Kickstarter (you can still get copies with a late pledge here). I did the best that I could with the campaign as I recovered from surgery and, very excitingly, I hit my target within a week. However, I can’t help feel a tinge of regret that I didn’t get to run the campaign as planned and launch all the extra goodies I wanted to. But thanks to the support I received the book is happening and will be in peoples hands this time next year. Recovery, however, has not been as easy as I was led to believe and is very slow going. But I’m pushing through all my exercises and stretches and I’m not letting the pain stop me getting this book finished!

A mock up of the cover design for Dogs of the World.

November approached at speed and the last of our trio of boys, Mr Tinkles the ragdoll cat, had surgery to remove a tumour from inside his ear canal. Fortunately tests showed that it was benign and with any luck it won’t grow back. He’s doing well. I honestly don’t know how I would have got through this year without the support of my husband Chris and Charlotte (as well as Fi, Bex and the Unleashed community).

Which pretty much brings me to this moment in Paris, so I guess I should talk about my top 10 images of the year!

I suppose this selection is not necessarily images I’ve captured this year, some are images that have been successful at awards or have meant something to me personally. Many are from personal projects, or were captured while teaching at workshops.

 Canon EOS R5, Canon RF 70-200mm ƒ/2.8L at 150mm, ISO 500, 1/800 sec, ƒ/2.8, 7 frames stitched

Beau, Maeve, Koda, Dusky & Hazy
We met this pack after the Arrowtown workshop at the fabulous Jackson's Orchard in Cromwell. We've photographed at this location a few times before and it has fast become one of my absolute favourite spots to photograph in all of New Zealand. I really wanted to capture a Dogorama of this group here and I'm very happy I did!

 Canon EOS R5, Canon EF 16-35mm ƒ/2.8L at 16mm, ISO 10,000, 1/8 sec, ƒ/2.8

Ralph and the Aurora Australis
Back in May the world went mad for one of the strongest Aurora's in a very long time. It is the first time I'd been able to see the Aurora Australis from home. So off we set in the car with Ralph to Birdlings Flat, a beach about an hour or so from home. I had hoped to capture some lit images of him at this spot, but, with literally thousands of people there, it quickly became apparent that using a flash was not proper etiquette for aurora watching, so I put the flash away and took some silhouettes instead. Still, I love how this one turned out.

 L: Canon EOS R5, Canon RF 70-200mm ƒ/2.8L at 150mm, ISO 800, 1/500 sec, ƒ/5.6, 13 frames stitched
R: Canon EOS R5, Canon RF 70-200mm ƒ/2.8L at 135mm, ISO 800, 1/500 sec, ƒ/5.6, 21 frames stitched

Sansa - Of Gods and Men
I took the image on the left in Iceland last year for Dogs of the World. For whatever reason on our first visit we did not get to see the famous Hallgrímskirkja church in Reykjavik. When we returned to Iceland in June for Barkjavik, and I saw it and the perfectly placed 'dog rocks' all around the area, I immediately had the idea to capture a matching image of the one I took the year before. Same, but different. Thankfully Sansa's mum was happy to meet me at 6am one morning before our students arrived so that I could capture the image on the right. I love how it shows the extreme structures of Iceland, be them carved by nature or by human hands.

 Canon EOS R5, Canon RF 70-200mm ƒ/2.8L at 200mm, ISO 400, 1/640 sec, ƒ/2.8

Colin
I photographed Colin in the sunflowers for our new Unleashed Challenges series, Empower. The challenge - In Depth. This challenge is all about capturing elements of depth in an image, using items in the foreground, middle ground and background. It gave me the excuse to head and shoot at this location, which I've been wanting to do for a very long time!

 Canon EOS R5, Canon RF 70-200mm ƒ/2.8L at 163mm, ISO 800, 1/500 sec, ƒ/2.8

Apple & Atlas
This image was captured at Apple and Atlas's adoption shoot. They are greyhounds, brother and sister and were available for adoption through Kiwi Kiwi Hounds Adoption, a charity I volunteer for regularly. This moment happened completely organically and I just kept clicking, hoping I'd captured the perfect moment between them and that I'd get it in focus. Fortunately I had managed to do both of those things and it resulted in one of my favourite shots of the year.

 Various taken on Canon EOS R5 and Fujifilm GFX 50s

Dogs Don’t Judge (But Cats Do!)
This is a little montage of images I've captured over the last 5 years. I put it together for the Iris awards this year. The rainbow colour spectrum is of course a nod to the pride flag and I created it as a way to say that dogs don't judge. I thought it turned out really nicely, but there was some little easter egg missing for the judges to think on. I came across the image of the rather judgemental looking bengal and thought it would add a touch of humour, because we all know cats absolutely judge us! The final image of the two collies is another little thing I wanted to add to say its always nice to have someone you can run off into the sunset with.

I don't know if the judges fully got the image, or the little easter eggs, and I don't mind. I put them there for myself more than anything else. But it did achieve a Gold at Iris and was the image that tipped my points score into Grand Master territory.

 Fujifilm GFX 100s II, Fujifilm GF 45-100mm ƒ/4R at 100mm, ISO 100, 1/1600 sec, ƒ/4, 18 images stitched

Buzz, Ezka, Nizmo & Zip
Another shot from my time in Arrowtown with Charlotte, Fi and Bex after the Unleashed Workshop. It's another location I've never shot before and always wanted to. I was actually intending to photograph Ezka, the light coloured dog on edge of this little lookout. But her mum put the other 3 dogs in a sit and wait while she posed Ezka. When the dappled light illuminated Ezka and left the others in the shade, I knew I had to capture it all!

 Fujifilm GFX 50s, Fujifilm GF 63mm ƒ/4R at 100mm, ISO 1,000, 1/200 sec, ƒ/2.8, 9 images stitched

Baloo
Dogs of the World mission: Photograph a Lagotto Romagnolo on a Gondola in Venice. Bucket list, dream shoot mission accomplished! Wow gondolas are small and wobbly, and they don't stop moving forwards. That made capturing a Dogorama and stitching it together a little more challenging than I hoped. But I made it work and I think this will be one of my favourite images from the book.

 L: Canon EOS R5, Canon RF 70-200mm ƒ/2.8L at 200mm, ISO 800, 1/250 sec, ƒ/2.8
R: Canon EOS R5, Canon RF 70-200mm ƒ/2.8L at 150mm, ISO 800, 1/250 sec

Jazz & Millefeuille
Both of these image were captured just a couple of hours before Jazz and Millefeuille each passed away. I've been seeing a lot of duality in my images recently and I ended up entering several diptychs into awards this year. But this one was very personal and their poses, eyes closed, was a complete coincidence. I wanted to personalise it even more so I digitally made double exposures using the textures of their fur/skin. They aren't technically perfect, but it doesn't matter. They are images I will always treasure of my boys in their final moments at home.

 Fujifilm GFX 100 II, Fujifilm GF 63mm ƒ/2.8R, ISO 100, 1/250 sec, ƒ/8

The Many Faces of Ralph
Rounding out my top 10 is this triptych of my little man. I've been playing a little in studio this year and I wanted some low key portraits of Ralph. This image is inspired by a trio of images by Rankin of David Bowie pulling faces. I saw it in a gallery in London and what particularly struck me was the way it was presented. It was printed as a lenticular image - as you moved around the image a different image revealed itself. It immediately got me thinking about how I could apply that. Then my thoughts turned to print competition, the Iris Awards and how cool it would be to get the judges using their legs a bit more when viewing the prints.

My idea came to fruition in August when not only the judges, but the entire room of audience members got up and walked left to right to see the different faces of my little monkey! It ended up scoring gold after quite a mixed critique.

To give you an idea of how it actually looks, I'll leave you with a little video.

This image was selected for the World Photographic Cup representing Team New Zealand I'm not sure how well it'll go without the element the print added to the score. But it's amazing to represent NZ in the WPC for the first time since 2018 when my portrait of Tallulah at the Louvre was selected.

Wow! As always, that turned out to be much longer than expected, thanks for sticking with me to the end. I'd love to see your favourite images from the past year, why not share them in the Pet Photography Unleashed group on Facebook?