Tag Archives: beach

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 ~ Milly and Mack the Rottweilers

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We actually arrived before sunrise for this very early morning beach session and in a short time were greeted by this beautiful sight. Getting up early for these sessions is so worth it, especially with a perfect clear sky like this!

This is one year old Mack – he loved soaking up the early morning sunshine and exploring the beach, so he pretty much stole the show early on in our session.

I love this flying tongue and head-tilt shot all in one!

Mack and his big sister Milly (older by only 6 months) are the best of friends.

Mack loves to chase flying sand and water, and puts on quite a show!

I don’t think Milly really understands the concept, but she’s happy to join in and give the jumping Mack a hard time!

Nothing better than a happy wet sandy dog at the beach!

Later at the dog park, Milly proved to be the more attentive model.

Mack preferred to be intruiged by a tractor at the other end of the park and I managed to capture some very attentive looks from him.

A family portraits was on the cards, luckily the dogs were pretty worn out by the stage and happy to pose with their mum and dad.

You can tell these guys really love their dogs!

Client Session ~ Ellie and Finn [Part 1]

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Ellie and Finn are two gorgeous girls who live in Brisbane with their family. They were dedicated enough to get up at a ridiculously early hour for the drive down to the Gold Coast for their morning photo session at the beach. We started at just on sunrise, which at this time of year is just before 5am. You can just imagine how early they got up, given it takes an hour to make the drive!

Unfortunately the gorgeous bright early morning light I was counting on never made an appearance as it was very cloudy, however we still got some lovely soft light shots of the two girls enjoying their experience at the beach.

Four year old Finn was loving the sand, quickly discovering it was awesome to dig holes in!

Burying her head in the sand quickly turned her into a bona-fide sand monster.

Once the squeaky toy made an appearance though, she was momentarily distracted!

This early in the morning, other dogs on the beach were rare, but Finn was always very interested in them, tracking their progress along the beach intently.

The dunes are a favourite place of mine to shoot in, with the soft grey-green grasses and salt-tolerant, wind-twisted trees in the background.

Ellie was also loving the beach. She’s ten years old, but don’t tell her that!

Ellie has that trademark Staffy smile down pat.

If you’re wondering about Ellie’s ears, she had some surgery on the folded one a while ago and it never stood up straight after that, but I think it gives her so much character!

We had intended to stick around at the park behind the beach for some green grass shots, but the sandflies had other ideas and relentlessly drove us off. We all survived (some itchier than others!) to fight another day and decided to organise the rest of the shoot a week later at the girls’ house in Brisbane. So, more photos of these gorgeous girls to follow!

Client Session ~ Rafe the Australian Terrier x Maltese

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Since the beach is pretty much Rafe’s favourite place in the world, we decided a beach shoot was the way to go! We’d been battling with the weather and had a few postponed shoots already, so on the afternoon of our session, although it was quite cloudy, it wasn’t actually raining so we decided to go ahead with it regardless. When I arrived at the beach, I was greeted with a LOT of this:

His owners Gerard and Christie had arrived about half an hour beforehand so they could get the beans out of him in time for my arrival, but there were still a few beans left by the time I turned up! We started off up in the dunes and although the sky was pretty grey, the muted tones of the sand and sky and ocean in the background ended up complimenting Rafe’s colouring beautifully.

With all that running around, it’s inevitable that sands gets EVERYWHERE.

Lucky mum was there to get it out of his eyes.

Rafe was definitely one of the most fun and energetic dogs I’ve photographed. He was completely at home at the beach, racing around in the sand, digging, burying his head, rolling and all manner of fun sand related doggy activities! What a beachy boy he is.

He was also quite curious and was intruiged enough to follow my camera around, trying to work out exactly what game it was that we were playing.

One of the most popular toys I take along to sessions are these little squeaky animals. They are great to hold and make noises with when trying to juggle a heavy camera and get a dog’s attention. Rafe decided that he LOVED it though and was quick to permanently adopt this little red caterpillar I’d brought along!

He really, really loved it, and spent quite a while lying in the sand burying it, unburying it and generally throwing it around. His antics had all three of us in hysterics for quite some time!

I felt a little mean for confiscating it for a while but don’t worry, he got to take it home with him afterwards. Apparently he was still playing with it days later, although he had managed to de-squeak it (probably to the immense relief of his mum and dad).

Rafe was a wonderfully willing model and consented to being placed up on some rocks for modelling duties. Love those fluffy legs!

Gerard had actually organise the session as a birthday present for his fiance Christie, so we set up a few family shots.

Christie spends a lot of time with Rafe, he’s her constant companion, so we had to take some shots with the both of them. We worked out that at 18 months old, Rafe must be going through that teenager phase. While quite happy to hang out in the general vicinity of his parents, when it came time to get up close for cuddles and love he got rather embarrassed and shamed out and decided he didn’t want a bar of it. Typical teen!

To finish our session off we headed around to the rock wall section of the Spit and Rafe did some further exploring. Definitely in mission mode in this one!

But still quite happy to pose on some rocks for us.

I just loved my session with Rafe and his mum and dad! They were so fun to work with and what a rad little dog! If ever I get a small fluffy dog, I’m gonna order one exactly like him (or possibly have him cloned).

Client Session ~ Maggie and Jessie

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These girls were the subjects of my very last session in Townsville and have the amazing privilege of living in doggy paradise! With the best doting parents a doggy could wish for, along with a gorgeous beach on their very back doorstep, life doesn’t get much better than this. This was another very early morning session and although slightly cloudier at times than Vash and Riley’s session, still came through with some wonderful light.

Jessie the German Shepherd is 11 years young and the fourth of the same breed for this Shepherd-loving family! She really has no concept of her age and although might not hear and see as well as she used to, still cuts a striking figure on the beach with her stick of choice, racing around like puppy.

Maggie is a bit of a first for this big dog loving family. Kylie and Jon were having Christmas drinks a couple of years ago with their then-neighbours, who had a gorgeous little fluffy puppy that Jon fell in love with. It turned out that the rest of the puppies from the litter needed homes too, so Kylie and Jon quickly decided to bring the only girl left into the family. Maggie the Maltese x Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is now two and a half years old and very much part of the family!

She is very much loved by her Dad and gets snuggles at every opportunity, as well as these special belly rubs. So funny to watch! She will just stand there as Jon puts his foot under her chest, and goes all the way along her belly and up her back legs. Maggie loves it and will stand there for as long as it’s on offer.

Although at the time of booking it was just a two dog family, there was a third little dog hanging around when I arrived to do the shoot. Buddy is a 6 year old Maltese x Poodle, advertised in the paper as a giveway. He was originally intended for a workmate who loves Maggie. I’ll let Kylie continue this story…

“When we saw him we all fell in love with him and he was so quiet and well behaved, we thought he would be perfect for Brian. We got him home and noticed he had really bad breath and when we looked in his mouth we were horrified to see how bad his teeth and gums were. They were so infected and dirty, the teeth and gums were grey. We took him to a wonderful vet in Townsville who looked after him but unfortunately his teeth were so bad, most of them just fell out once they started to clean them. Not to worry, he still manages to chomp his way through life. The longer we had him the more we fell in love with him. He is so gentle and loving and after what we put him through at the vets, we felt we couldn’t give him away, so now we have to find another dog for Brian!”

I love this shot of Buddy and Maggie, looking into their future together.

As the session was originally intended for just the two dogs and Buddy was still a bit sore from his dental work and desexing, he doesn’t star as much as the other two in the photos. I am glad I managed to get a few of him for the family though, it was great to hear they’d decided to keep him! So, back to Maggie and Jessie.

Maggie was absolutely hilarious on the beach. She alternated between racing madly around in figure of 8′s in a blur of white fur and violently displaced sand…

To digging holes and burying herself…

There wasn’t really a lot of middle ground, it was either flat out, or, well, flat out!

After spending a while on the beach, we retired to the ‘beach shack’. I just loved this place. It has been in Jon’s family for 50 years with Jon’s dad building the original beach shack way back then. Since then, it’s undergone some pretty extensive renovations with an extra floor added and a lot more room, including the best man-cave shed I’ve seen in a while. It’s still managed to retain a lovely relaxed beachy kind of feel about it though, it was so nice to relax on the back deck with the dogs, I’m sure they appreciated it just as much as I did!

Before posing the dogs on a comfy wicker chair for some shots, I asked if it was ok that the dogs be up there. I don’t think Miss Jessie especially is allowed up there often, but they said it would be fine for the photos, so up they went.

Jessie made herself quite comfortable.

A little too comfortable perhaps. I was later told that for days afterwards, the dogs thought it was well within their rights to jump up on the chair and make themselves comfortable whenever they liked! It was worth it for the photos guys, I promise! Oops!

Little Buddy was content to just hang around and observe the proceedings. Doesn’t he just have the sweetest face? And a gorgeous temperament to go with it, he really deserves this new life he’s found for himself.

From the deck, the view over the backyard and to the beach not far beyond was just too inviting, so we moved into the garden for a few more shots. As long as there were treats and interesting squeaking things involved, Jessie was a keen model.

What a beautiful girl, how’s that wise expression.

I get the feeling Jessie spends long hours in this garden, observing the goings-on, and of course sleeping!

With all the beachy mischief well and truly behind her, Maggie had her serious modelling pants on.

And who could resist those big brown eyes!

I love this one of the two girls.

That was the last of my Townsville sessions! As all the photo sessions were from the same family, I felt like I got to know them over the few days that I was there. Such a genuine, caring, down to earth and especially dog-loving family would be hard to find anywhere else! Thanks for the awesome coffee, the amazing breakfasts (how lucky am I), the fantastic stories (even if I had trouble remembering them all) and local knowledge and most importantly, thanks for inviting me up to photograph your doggy family, it was a pleasure!