Category Archives: Golden Retriever

Client Session ~ Comet the Golden Retriever and Sun the Australian Cattle Dog

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Meet Comet and Sun, two rescues who are lucky enough to live near the beautiful Cabarita Beach in Northern NSW. Comet is a 9 year old Golden Retriever, named for his gorgeous full tail, as illustrated in this shot!

The late afternoon light at the beach was just perfect and played up Comet’s lovely thick golden coat when backlit.

Not to be outshone, Sun worked the light too and looked much more alert than her age of 10 years would suggest.

Comet had me in stitches with his upside-down stick chewing antics.

Whereas Sun was quite happy to pose it up in the sunshine near the rocks.

Earlier in the afternoon before heading to the beach we’d had a bonding session in the backyard, and these two proved to be excellent models.

Client Session ~ Harry the Golden Retriever

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Bec has been a long term client of mine, she first contacted me to photograph her horses which was actually my first horse session. When she got married I photographed her wedding (yep, my first wedding), then when baby Josh came along, it was time for a photo session with him as well. And yes, that was my first baby photo session!

Finally, 3 years later, we’ve managed to get around to photographing her three gorgeous pooches – Herbie, Harry and Bamm Bamm! I’ve split this post up into two as there were just too many lovely shots to include in one and I wanted to share them all.

So first up we have Harry the Golden Retriever. Harry is the leader, peace keeper and general nice guy of the pack, blessed with a typical Golden Retriever personality.

His Mum sums it up best:

“I tell everyone that Harry is the Dalai Lama reincarnated or will be the next official Dalai Lama. He is the kindest, most gentlest soul I’ve ever met. There isn’t another dog like Harry, he’s extremely sensitive and in tune with people and animals emotions, and loves all creatures great and small. Harry’s even helped foster kittens from the AWL and let them hang with their claws from his jowls and just looked at me like ‘ummm I don’t know how to get this creature off me!’. He’d never think to harm anything even if it was hurting him! Just a beautiful soul and the calming alpha force keeping my three dogs in check!”

Rebecca is lucky enough to live on beautiful property, so we decided to take Harry off on a little walk by himself down to his favourite place, the creek.

He was a little confused that we wouldn’t let him have a swim, but oh-so obedient in obeying his Mum’s requests to stay away from the water, although that didn’t stop him looking longingly in that direction!

Harry has his stays (plus many other awesome tricks) down pat and was so easy to work with against the various backdrops the setting provided. I especially loved these tall trees – the Australian bush is so pretty!

I’m in love the almost watercolour-like background of this shot, and Harry’s keen expression.

We were also blessed with some gorgeous late afternoon light.

Harry was just an absolute delight to work with. A gorgeous, gentle, wise and happy soul, Rebecca is truly blessed to have him in her life!

Stay tuned for part two of this session, featuring Harry’s little brothers, Herbie and Bamm Bamm the Havanese.

Client Session ~ Odin the Golden Retriever and Inara the Labrador Retriever

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Odin and Inara’s parents were lucky enough to win a photography session with me in the Golden Retriever Club of Queensland’s Silent Auction a few months ago. These are two of the most chilled out retrievers you’ll ever meet, guaranteed!

We had the session at a family members place they hadn’t visited much before, so they were pretty keen to check out all the new smells. Inara is just 12 months old and definitely the most relaxed Labrador Retriever pup I’ve come across. She has the sweetest face and who couldn’t love the cute little ridge on her nose?

Like one typical of her breed, she loves playing in water, happily digging all the water out of a bucket, before discovering this ornamental fountain! I’m sure she thought it was put there just for her to drink out of and play in.

Odin the Golden Retriever is a rescue, estimated to be about 3 years old, who joined the family after Inara. They instantly became best friends! Something tells me though that the gorgeous Odin would quite happy get along with anyone or any dog he’s introduced to.

The two get on famously and while content to just chill out near each other, when I brought out a squeaky there was a bit more excitement in the air, so they took it up and notch and gave us a demonstration of their play fighting abilities!

The backyard we were in is a lovely location, with a deck, lovely green grass and gardens. It provided some great colours and textures for backgrounds!

Odin really is just a big cuddle bunny.

He loves lying flat out on his back getting belly rubs from his Mum, I swear he’s smiling here!

Being such a chilled out and happy boy, it was hard to get him to look alert for his starring shots! I managed here, but of course the lip caught up in his teeth kind of spoils the effect. It’s a pretty good representation of his character though!

Odin and Inara’s parents were keen to get some pics of the two dogs together, so we set them up and I snapped away and got lucky enough to score this one. I had to save up my most crazy high pitched noise for this and it paid off with the dual head tilt action, awesome!

Thanks for letting me spend the afternoon with you and your lovely dogs! It was a pleasure.

Client Session ~ Odin and Inara {black & white set}

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While working on the black & white conversions of the shots of these guys, I was consistently delighted at how they were coming out! So delighted in fact that I’ve decided to create a blog post dedicated just to my favourite black & white images from this session. Their proper ‘story’ blog post will be coming soon in full colour, but in the meantime, please enjoy this set!

Client Session ~ Gus and Inca the Poodle x Golden Retrievers

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Gus and Inca’s parents had organised a gift certificate quite a while ago, but with both of them working hard and trying to get their pair of rather furry pups looking good for the camera, it’s taken a while to get their session sorted. I’m happy to wait for when clients are ready though and of course the doggies must look their best! Our session was on a rather cloudy afternoon in the Gold Coast hinterland, what a beautiful location.

They also warned me that Inca especially was lacking a bit of training, so I was surprised to turn up to two rather well behaved and very cuddly pups! Gus (on the right) is the older of the two at 4 years old (Inca is 3) and the biggest as well. He was almost as tall as Luna, and reminded me of her so much when he greeted me at the front door proudly prancing around with a giant stuffed toy. Definitely a Luna moment, I wished I had my camera out at that stage.

These pair are lucky enough to have a massive backyard that runs down a slope into the valley, offering them wonderful spy-vision over the neighbourhood goings-on. Gus especially was forever racing off down the hill to check up on this or the other and patrol his territory!

Inca is more of a follower but still likes to admire the view over the valley. I just loved her curly Poodle tail!

The pair were kind enough to sit beautifully right next to each other for a photo, I didn’t even have to ask! What a pair of naturals!

With melting eyes like these, it seems like modelling would be a good career choice for them.

After they’d let off a bit of steam running around outside patrolling the yard, we moved inside. Coloured furniture can provide interesting backdrops, this grey outdoor wicker chair sets off Inca’s colouring perfectly.

Inside were some red leather couches that I knew would make fantastic props. Gus was quite happy to lay still and model for me.

Inca however needed a bit more coaching on the ‘stay’ aspect, we got there in the end though!

As a reward for co-operating with me inside, we headed back outside for some playtime fun. Gus loves his big red Wahu ball.

As well as rolling around on the grass being attacked by Inca!

The end. :)