A Different Kind of Photo Shoot
We wanted to make the most of the fact that our friend, photographer Katie Orlinsky, had time to take a trip with us to the Tolovana Hot Springs and do a photo shoot for murkl.com.
It turned into an amazing trip, a different kind of photo shoot, a feast for the taste buds and a great adventure! Even if, despite all our careful planning, things went rather Alaska-style...
The plan was to serve a gourmet dinner in a small cabin at the Tolovana Hot Springs – in other words, 'in the middle of nowhere' – and capture that exclusive luxury on camera. For that, we had to borrow Katie for a day from the "Iditarod". The Iditarod is a 1,000-mile sled dog race that Katie was covering for National Geographic.
Now, murkl.com obviously doesn't have National Geographic's budget... but we have good connections, and we have Katie! Katie managed to get us a "ride-along" on a small plane, pilot included. The pilot had been hired by a publisher to fly her reporters from checkpoint to checkpoint along the Iditarod. Katie knows this publisher, so she was allowed to use the pilot's services as well. Luckily, there's also a small airstrip at the Tolovana Hot Springs. So it sounds like we'd just borrow Katie for a quick shoot and then she'd be flown back to her actual assignment. But in Alaska, things often turn out differently…