Tag Archives: Dogs

Client Session ~ Biscuit and Checke the Greyhounds

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Biscuit and Checke’s mum was lucky enough to score a session referred by Alexis, whose four Greyhounds I photographed early last year. Initially we’d decided just to photograph Biscuit, as they’d never had much luck getting good photos of his big sister Checke. They brought her along anyway though and, well, you’ll see what happened!

To begin with though, meet Biscuit.

The session took place at a park on Mount Tamborine and after scoping out the area and deeming it safe, Biscuit was let off lead. Not 5 minutes into our session, he spotted a rabbit! Luckily with some quick thinking by Mechalle and excellent training, Biscuit was recalled and a crisis averted. Anyone who owns or is familiar with sight hounds will know this is not an easy feat!

After a bit of a shaky start to life, originating from an unplanned litter which could not be registered as racing dogs and with no less than four different homes by the age of 11 weeks, Biscuit found his way into the home of Mechalle and husband Graeme.

At just 3 and a half years old, he’s actually officially known as Biscuit CCD JDX SD SPD ET – which means he has titles in agility, obedience AND endurance. In fact, he holds the honour of being the first Greyhound in Queensland with the ET (endurance) title and the second in Australia!

What a clever boy!

With all this training under his collar, he also makes a fantastic model, staying just where we put him and responding beautifully to treats and toys being tossed around. Of course there were birds in the trees to check out too…

Big sister Checke is had a somewhat different start in life. She raced until she was three and a half, then retired. Mechalle and Graeme fostered her and when it was time to move onto her forever home, she had something to say about it – protesting very loudly – until it was decided that she would stay on with her favourite person in the world, Graeme.

On previous occasions when trying for photos, Checke had been a most unwilling model. She seemed to be a lot more relaxed outdoors though (previous attempts had been in a studio) and my sneaky long lens proved a real advantage.

Mechalle noted that Checke never sits down like this but we figured out it must have been because she was on a steep hill, how funny!

Checke was also quite happy lying down in the grass, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine. What a stunning old girl she is at 10 years old.

Towards the end of the session, we managed to get both dogs sitting and laying down in the general vicinity of each other. If there is something I love most about photographing Greyhounds, it’s that they’re usually quite content to stay in the same place for a while, with very little encouragement!

To finish off, how awesome are Checke’s ears! One up, one down.

Checke and Biscuit were both adopted through a great Greyhound rescue organisation called Friends of the Hound. To find out more about adopting a Greyhound of your own, please check out Friends of the Hound Greyhound Adoption Group. They do fantastic work!

2012 Calendars

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It’s that time of year again when you turn your trusty wall calendar over to December and suddenly realise “oh my, the year is almost over!” Never fear, I have a couple of different calendar options for you to get you sorted for 2012. You can purchase these online through the Red Bubble website.

The Pets calendar features images from client sessions in 2011. View and purchase the Pets Calendar.

For Luna fans, her annual calendar is filled with images from 2011 and includes a couple of special guests. December includes, as always, a special santa hat image. View and purchase Luna’s calendar.

If you’re a past client (doesn’t matter how far in the past) and would like a calendar featuring your pet only, I also create custom calendars using your images. You can either choose the images you want in the calendar yourself or leave it up to me. There is a $50 setup fee and calendars are then available for purchase online for $27 each + postage. Just send me an email to get the ball rolling!

Here’s a calendar I made for Albert the cancer survivor. You can view Albert’s blog post and read his story here.

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 ~ Herbie & Bamm Bamm the Havanese

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Continued on from Harry’s post, Herbie and Bamm Bamm are Harry’s two little brothers. Both Havanese, they are gorgeous little dogs. You could say that this breed quite popular with Bec’s family, as I’ve also photographed Mali who belongs to Bec’s mum!

Bamm Bamm is three years old and the most independent of the pack.

He has the most silky, softest fur and I was especially taken with his little white fluffy feet, how cute are they!

While he loves attention from people and is a lovely friendly little boy, he’s also quite happy being off on his own, doing his own thing.

We took a trip to the park for a change of scenery and poor little Bamm Bamm got bitten by a nasty ant on his paw. He was valiantly limping around but with some persuasion in the form of delicious treats still managed to pose beautifully for these shots.

His little brother, the youngest of the three at almost three years of age, is Herbie.

Herbie is Bec’s special boy, in her own words “Herbie is my soul mate dog, he has 100% stolen my heart”. He was a wedding present from her husband, arriving on a plane from Melbourne and straight into Bec’s arms. He went through a lot of pain and health problems when growing and as a result, has bowed front legs that don’t quite function as they should and are still quite painful. Perhaps because of his ordeal or perhaps just because thats’s just the way he is, Herbie doesn’t really feel comfortable with pats and cuddles from anyone other than Bec or her mum.

Luckily for me though, Herbie is quite interested in food and it was no problem to get his attention!

With a bit of patience, we even had him sitting and staying at a distance for some gorgeous photos with his big brother Harry in the background.

I just love his brown eyes against his lily white (super soft and fluffy!) fur.

We ended our session at the park with Herbie looking adoringly up at his mum with the sun sinking down behind the trees in the background. Awwww!

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!