Our onsite Office…!

Our onsite Office……!

As many a mainstream photographer will tell you its often not easy to capture  that desired image that sits in ones minds eye so to speak..

Often weather and or lighting conditions are unfavorable, so to get that desired image we need to wait and be ready …

Mandy and I have been in this photographic business for several years now and around five years ago we looked at combining adventure travel within New Zealand  with our photography business so bought a caravan  to accommodate this intent..

Firstly we looked at several makes and models and initially settled on a 25 foot Jayco van, however around a year later believe it or not it was stolen…

To cut a long story short, insurance paid out and some time later we imported our current Jayco in from Australia, this time electing to upgrade to the heavier chassis, suspension and tires to a Jayco Silverline Outback …

We also decided to reduce the length a little to a 23 footer, as we found with our frequent back country shingle roads the longer van at times bellied crossing river fords or gaining access to camp sites with steep descent or climbs in and out…..

So this Jayco Outback serves our purpose very well, being tough enough to handle back country roads and tracks, and still have ample space inside as we are often away from home for one to three weeks at a time…

Living off grid for extended periods requires a bit of planning …. food , fuel, are two obvious items required but things like the need to replenish our fresh water tanks for one.. the van has two separate underfloor tanks that hold 80 litres each and using this sparingly we can get around ten days supply use..

We often try to camp near fresh mountain rivers or streams and as a part of the vans equipment is an electric submersible water pump and gear which is powered by our small 2 kva gen set that also travels with us to so this set up works well..

Grey water from dishes and showers etc is held in a separate 90 litre tank as well as further portable tanks and this is dumped at appropriate sites as we travel to our next destination and along with this our black waste of which we have two tanks will last us the camp duration before needing emptying …

I guess the van is a bit of luxury living but why not having worked hard all of our earlier years  …

Having the convenience of built in solar provides all of the vans lighting and other 12 volt power needs and this system works well…additional power needs that require 240 volts such as photo processing equipment is supplied via the 2kva gen set…

So with this set up we can basically stop anywhere that is  suitable and have everything needed to stay onsite…

I have often said to Mandy that we have a bach in every town so to speak with the van… We often will park it facing a nice outlook , beside the seaside or a nice high country lake or river etc and sit out under the awning in the evening just to watch the sun go down…

At each photo shoot location we download the days imagery straight to our in vans storage library, and each night  will do some sorting and post processing , this then is downloaded to our main computer and final editing when home…

We do this incase for what ever reason a camera malfunctions, or in the case of drone imagery if anything happens to it we have not lost the entire stored imagery cage…

Another good thing is we can see straight away while still onsite if the imagery taken is of suitable quality up on screen..

Over the years we have found quite a number of little gem camping spots and have returned to these places if in this part of the country…

Both Mandy and I love to camp in the back country beside a clear stream with bush nearby where its safe to have a small open fire to cook our evening meal using the camp oven… along with boiling the billy for a cuppa …. just a simple…. but very rewarding way of life..!