Zen and the Art of Being an Official Show Photographer

My family and I emigrated to Australia about 20 years ago now and we settled down in semi-rural south coast New South Wales. I’m originally from near London and it took some time to adjust to the pace and intracies of living here. I did so by involving myself in as many different things as possible, including volunteering with the local surf club at a surf lifesaver. More recently I became involved with the local show society and have been the official show photographer for the last three years.

In many ways the annual Berry show signifies the drawing down of the summer season. It brings together a varied community of people and is a celebration of life in country New South Wales.

This is Australia and so there is, of course, a competitive element to most of the activities during the two days of the show. In the pavilions locals enter their best fruit and veg, cakes, woodworking, photography, art, needlework, quilt-making and preserves in fiercely fought competitions. In the stables and the show-rings, beef and dairy cattle, poultry, goats, sheep, alpacas and pets jostle for a rosette. And in the main Showground, show-jumping and myriad niche equestrian events take place.

As the show photographer I get to go wherever I want, in the main show-ring, up in the commentary boxes, all through the stables, yards, tents and pavilions. The difficulty is not finding interesting things to photograph, it’s deciding which ones to concentrate on – often it’s the incidental moments that make the best photographs.

There are of several key events during the weekend that I have to capture – the rodeo, the fireworks, the big drawcard demonstrations, the show-girls and the show-jumping. But I also need to ensure that we have up-to-date imagery for everything else so that it can be used in next year’s show-guide and on the website and social media.

There are 326 other country shows in New South Wales, including several local ones at Kiama, Kangaroo Valley, Nowra, Milton, Batemans Bay and Albion Park. And the travelling rodeo visits many of them – it’s the big drawcard event that closes out Friday night at the Berry Show.

The show is made possible by a small army of volunteers and it’s a year-round undertaking that involves a military-level of organisation. Within the poultry section alone there are 135 different classes ranging from soft-feather bantams to rare birds.

On the town-side of the Showground is the traditional ‘sideshow alley’ with fairground rides and food-stalls. In the evening the local kids descend on the show, gorge themselves on Dagwood Dogs and slushies and dare each other to the fast-rides.

There’s far too much happening to squeeze it all into a single day and so the show stretches over two – though the exhibits and the judging all takes place in the pavilions in the week before the public are invited in.

At the northern end of the Showgrounds, quite deliberately located next to the bar, is the axe and wood arena where the traditional ‘sawyer’ events take place. Contestants – primarily men, but not exclusively – compete in ‘standing block’, ‘underhand’ ‘double-saw’ and ‘tree-felling’. It’s not always the big units that win.

On the Saturday the super-competitive events give way to less serious ones – young famers, haystack building, dog high-jump, horse-buggy racing, mechanical bull-riding. The ‘young woman competition’ – formerly ‘showgirls’ are presented in front of the exclusive sponsors lounge and then whisked away in open-topped sports cars. Before the fireworks a motocross team perform stunts to the immense delight of the show’s younger demographic.

And then at 9pm on the dot, the commentator begins a countdown to the closing fireworks finale. The kids all shout-down the last 5 seconds as ‘Mr Boom Boom’ triggers the display and watches from 80 metres away like me.

And then the show’s over for another year – though the planning has already begun. I walked 24km over the course of the two days and shot nearly 4,000 images on my trusty Fujifilm X-T4 camera. It was a classic show in every way – lots of smiles and high spirits everywhere – nobody taking it *too* seriously, but always happy to take a win. I will be back, multi-coloured access-all-areas tags on my wrist and some comfortable hiking trainers on my feet.

If you’d like to see behind-the-scenes footage, I shot content for a video that you can find on my YouTube channel.

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