Silvia has nine dogs with whom she lives in the North of Tenerife.
2,5 of her dogs are Czechoslovakian Wolfdogs - a breed that we’ve become fans of since our photoshoot with Mira. It’s the wolfdogs that caught our eye and made us contact Silvia to hear whether they were up for a photoshoot during our stay on the island. Turns out nine dogs give you some variety to pick from, so we ended up with shooting four dogs in the forests of Tenerife.

Let me present the stars of our trip and this post:

Astrid - half Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, half Swiss Shepherd

Asgard - Swiss Shepherd, Astrid’s father

Fenrir - Czechoslovakian Wolfdog

Freya - Czechoslovakian Wolfdog

https://www.facebook.com/islandsnorthdogs/

They were all very excited to be out in the forest where they usually go for running and training. All four of them were super hyped and very active, but reacted immediatly when Silvia called them back (also to get them off the path to make room for mountain bikers). Once in a while a dog or two had to go on the leash so that we could take portraits of a single dog alone but that wasn’t a problem at all.

Asgaard and Astrid running off their energy

Silvia was also great at remember to quickly take off their collars which makes editing the photos afterwards much easier!

A wild Jonathan in its habitat

Typical behind the scenes shot of a dog photoshoot: the photographer on the ground and the dog expectantly looking at its owner just outside of the frame, probably holding something very delicious or fun in their hand.

In the beginning, we were taking photos among the trees which resulted in pretty difficult conditions as we met up early in the morning.

When we found a clearance the conditions improved a lot with more and better light.

Thanks a lot to Silvia for letting us meet her dogs! Make sure to check out their Facebookpage: The Northdogs

Meeting up with locals when traveling

It’s the third time that we reached out to locals before starting our vacation to arrange a photoshoot with them. When we were in Scotland in summer 2018, we had a photoshoot with eight horses, and in 2017, we visited Christine and John on Cephalonia.

This is not only an interesting and purposeful way of meeting locals and learn something about the country and culture, often you also go places where you wouldn’t have gone by yourself.
We would never expected Tenerife to have real forests where it actually rains regularly if Silvia hadn’t showed it to us.