Filming week

There's been a lot happening in the last few days as we had a film crew with us, busy shooting pictures and videos for the exhibition and promotional material related to it.

On Sunday, a good group of people with their dogs came for a photo shooting in front of our turf houses. It was incredibly fun, the weather especially nice, cold but sunny. I want to list up all the dogs because they will play their part in various materials related to the project:

Leiru Tryggur (see picture)

Breiðanes Kría

Breiðanes Björt

Breiðanes Eldur

Breiðanes Elding

Gerplu Kvika

Sunnusteins Prins

Stokk-Sels Bósi

On Monday, we shot material here at the farm. Our dogs Reykjavalla Íslands Sómi and Huldudals Hraundís played the leading roles as we focused on their interactions with the horses and sheep and the working nature of the Icelandic sheepdog. Among other things, they were equipped with GoPro cameras on their backs, which will provide a different perspective than we are used to.

On Tuesday, we interviewed Hanna Kristín at Reykjavellir about her view on the Icelandic sheepdog and her breeding goals. We then followed Hanna on a walk with her dogs. They are:

Reykjavalla Sæla

Reykjavalla Viska

Reykjavalla Vaskur

Vestanvindur Hrauni Tindsson

Close-ups were taken of Vaskur and Hrauni. They, along with Viska, are dogs with double dewclaws, and breeding them is one of Hanna's breeding goals.

Then we went to Glaumbær and got permission to film inside the old farm. It's still very difficult to find historical pictures of Icelandic sheepdogs, so we thought of solutions, and I look forward to seeing the outcome.

Thursday was the last shooting day, and then it was our turn, the farmers, to talk about our dog life and discuss the characteristics of the Icelandic sheepdog. Sómi and Hraundís finally got their photo shoot at the turf houses. The evening was used for further brainstorming for the exhibition, and I feel I have a good idea now of how it will be best to set it up.

We're quite exhausted after this week but very excited to see all the footage. There's still a lot of work to do before we can open the exhibition, but we're on the right track.

Producing such high-quality content as we did these past days wouldn't be possible without the grant we received from the Development Fund of Northwest Iceland. The grant allowed us to hire professionals for the job, and since we've worked with the same team before, we expect an excellent outcome.

I want to thank everyone who helped us in this part of the project; those who traveled to bring their dogs for the photo shoot, Hanna for the reception, the museum director and staff at Glaumbær who granted us special and by no means guaranteed permission, and special thanks to my husband and son for their patience and support with all my ideas.

Finally, I want to mention our social media. It pays to hit "like" on our Facebook page to hear about new content on this site and those who want to follow the daily dog life on our farm Lýtingsstaðir are directed to our Instagram.