MANY people visit the central Karoo during the icy winter months to enjoy hunting season, but since 2015, photographers have been flocking here for shooting of a totally different kind.
The Karoo Ranching Film Festival offers photographers and filmmakers the opportunity to capture the beauty of nature, agriculture and its people through their lenses, and every year more and more participants are drawn to this highly positive initiative.
“The Karoo Ranching Film Festival is a celebration of positivity, creativity and the outdoors,” said organiser Julie Hobson, while chatting to Mid-Karoo Express on the farm Elandskloof. “It offers the world a peak into the hard but very rewarding life on Karoo farms, and brings home all the positive stories about these farmers and the farming community.”
Julie, husband Sean and fellow farmers in the area are working together to promote this beautiful part of the Karoo as the ‘Golden Horseshoe of Filming’.
Over a span of five days, several photoshoots take place during the golden hours of sunrise and sunset. Experienced horsemen (and women) double as models, providing photographers with breathtaking moments to be captured against a backdrop of savannah plains, mountainous terrain, stretching horizons and luscious pivot irrigated lucerne fields.
“We have been very lucky in luring the type of photographers who understand the importance of collaboration and co-operation in the field,” said Julie.
“The festival requires a mindset of beneficial mutualism in order to ensure successful shoots while working with horses, cattle and people for long hours in the cold. In that sense, we are proud to say that the Karoo Ranching Film Festival is a true reflection of the day-to-day spirit of interdependence and the power of the collective that parallels the bed of the Sundays River as it runs through the Golden Horseshoe of Filming.”
Follow the Karoo Ranching Film Festival on Instagram (#karooranchingfilmfestival) and Facebook to witness some of the extraordinary footage taken by photographers. Also check out the Karoo Ranching Agricultural Cooperation on Facebook for more information.
