SubscribeBy popular demand, I’ve also created a Great Dane calendar for 2010. All proceeds from calendar sales will go to Great Dane Rescue. Great Dane Rescue is a fantastic group of people who work together to find new forever homes for rescued Great Danes all over Australia.
If you would like to support Great Dane Rescue and in the process get yourself a fantastic 2010 calendar full of beautiful Great Danes, please consider purchasing a calendar from Red Bubble.
When I studied photography in 1999-2000, it was back in the days of film. We developed our own colour and black and white film and did all our own printing by hand in the darkroom. Digital cameras were in existence, but they were poor quality 2 megapixel things that we only really regarded as toys – something to play around with – not for serious budding photographers! Years later when I upgraded to a digital SLR, I decided to keep my film SLR which then sat in my cupboard for years until late last year when I decided to put a roll of film through it just for fun. Funny how back in the day, digital cameras were for playing around on but now, it’s the film cameras that have taken over that role.
So I shot a roll of 36 exposure slide film – Fuji RDP III colour slide film to be exact. To assist in the fun stakes, I decided to have it cross processed – which means it was developed in C-41 colour negative film chemicals instead of E6 colour slide film chemicals. This means you end up with negatives instead of slide film, with the added wildcards of distinctive and sometimes random colour shifts, an overall contrast boost and bucketloads of gorgeous grain.
Of course my subject matter was dogs – my two girls – Kaya and Luna – at their favourite place in the world, the dog beach at The Spit here on the Gold Coast. I only just had this film developed last week, and we lost Kaya in March this year, so it was both uplifting and incredibly sad to see images of her that I hadn’t seen before.
I’m really happy with how these images turned out. With cross processing you always expect the worst, as this technique can be quite unpredictable with varied and often undesired results. There are a few images in here which I absolutely love though which was a pleasant surprise. All of the images below have not be edited in any way – they are straight digital scans from the film straight out of the camera – just resized for the blog and watermarked.
Enjoy. 
More dog show photos for the Great Dane lovers out there – these were taken at the Great Dane Club of NSW Championship Show at Erskine Park in Sydney in July. As usual, there were lots of gorgeous fawns.
Two of which ended up taking out Best in Show and Runner Up Best in Show.
This blue boy is gorgeous and came second out of all the male dogs entered.
Each judge does it their own way and it’s interesting to see how they interact with the dogs as they are examining them.
For the black Great Dane fans out there.
The babies were as cute as ever, this little harlequin girl was more interested in giving the judge kisses than standing still.
And this cute little fawn girl stood beautifully…
… but still wanted kisses from her mum.
Best Head is always a good class to watch, as the judges rank the dogs solely on their structure and shape of their head.
This fawn girl has won this class twice in a row.
Some of the other fun classes are Best Veteran – the dog must be over 7 years of age and are often successfully retired show dogs so their return to the ring is often a cause for celebration. It’s good to see the ‘old grey faces’ out and about strutting their stuff, showing they still have it!
Another class is Best Parent and Offspring where the aim is to demonstrate an improvement of dogs from generation to generation.
For more information about this show, please see the results here and a gallery of all photos here.
I recently attended the Great Dane Society of Queensland Championship Show at Durack in Brisbane to take some photos. They aren’t my usual style of photography but Great Danes are ‘my’ breed so I always enjoy watching them and taking photos so their owners can see how beautiful they are!
For some reason, you don’t often see many brindle coloured Danes, it’s probably about the rarest of the showable colours. This gorgeous guy was the only one in attendance on the day.
Fawns generally dominate the showing scene and this show was no exception.
A beautifully marked harlequin – note the pure white background and glossy black patches that have a ‘torn edge’ appearance.
Speaking of glossy black!
The baby puppies are always entertaining to watch, this one was very well behaved and stood nicely while the judge examined her.
Another pretty puppy in black along with one of my favourite fawn girls.
The dogs have to show how well they move as part of the judging process, this girl was flying along and looked amazing.
To finish off, another harlequin. This was her first show back after giving birth to 11 puppies!
For more information about this show, please see the results here and a gallery of all photos here.
