So, I was doing back to back winters, so I'm going to show you how to do that.
Back to back winters for about 8 or 9 years and then decided last year to stay in Wanaka for a summer
and completely fell in love with the place 10 times over.
I was a bit nervous about doing it, I felt like I was studying again in my photography career
but ended up stepping into shooting a lot of mountain biking and base jumping
and realised that my passion could be in anything that I chose.
The thing that's special about Wanaka is the backbone of the people here
who love getting out there and just riding and using the landscape we've got here
is just their hobby and I think that's the thing that I love to shoot the most
is people that are just stoked on being here, living here and playing in our landscape.
So, living and working in Wanaka, it's a holiday resort, it's paradise,
it's not easy to make a living, especially when your freelance work can be up and down
but we live here not to make fame or fortune, we live here because we absolutely love our surroundings
and the people in the mountains.
A lot of my work is editorial based, so sending photos worldwide to international publications
and this year I was fortunate enough to be in the finals of the Red Bull Illume Image Quest
which 50 people made it through to the finals, 50 photographers
and we were invited to Dublin for a big awards night.
The image was taken here in Wanaka and I was the only female, so it was pretty epic.
Every weekend you're out doing missions, you're out in the mountains, you're biking
so I guess a lot of people that live here are here because they like to be fit
and head out into the hills and enjoy the landscape.
So yeah, the snow brought me here originally and I'm from Scotland
and came down here for skiing back in 2001
and completely changed my life, you know, I'm now completely moved down here full time
and I never would have ever imagined that I'd be living on the other side of the world
in a little old New Zealand, but yeah, Wanaka made me addicted to the place, so here I am.
That's another thing that made me want to live and work out of Wanaka
like all my good friends were all self-employed
and there's so many creatives that live here that you wouldn't know about,
I think designers, web designers, filmers, photographers.
You know, people need to think outside the box when living here
because as I said before it's not overly easy to make a living in a conventional way
so a lot of people are here and they're working out how they can make a living
doing what they love in such an awesome place
so I think that's what gives Wanaka its really unique, awesome vibe.
