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Client Session ~ Kane, Heli, Angel and Tiger the Greyhounds

Posted on 22 January, 2011 by admin

I just love Greyhounds. When deciding what breed of dog to get originally, I’d seriously considered adopting one of these beautiful dogs, however they were pipped at the post eventually by my love of Great Danes. There are a lot of misconceptions about the sort of pets that Greyhounds make, mainly due to people mistakenly thinking they have boundless energy and need lots of exercise and a big yard. I’ll put that theory to rest right now by saying, this foursome were the. laziest. dogs. I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

Angel and Tiger were first up. Tiger at 6 years old has never raced, due to his size. He’s a big goofy boy and has been a loved pet for all of his life.

Early on in the session, after a quick sniff around the yard, he settled himself down and was quite content just lying there looking gorgeous.

Alexis had only had him for 6 weeks when we had our session but he’d settled in well already. I love this shot of him enjoying the sunshine in the yard.

He was certainly the most playful of all of them, happily engaging in a game of tug-o-war with me. This was rather exciting apparently, and resulted in him having a brief zoomie episode around the yard for all of about 2 minutes.

Six year old Angel shared the yard with Tiger, and spent most of time lounging around, tongue lolling out sideways from her mouth. Just like this really.

With a bit of rolling around on her back too for good measure.

Angel hasn’t always had it so good. She never raced but came from an abusive home at 3 years old. She has very few of her teeth left and I shudder to think the kind of life she had before she was rescued.

Greyhounds always seem to have their little ears tucked back, I guess to be as streamlined as possible! They do create some lovely ear folds for me to photograph though.

They can also be very expressive – here’s Tiger looking very alert – what a cutie!

The next pair, Kane and Heli, were rather shocked at being asked to hang around in the back yard when there were comfy beds on offer elsewhere, so we relocated to the patio area and set up some plush beds for them there which were much more to their taste.

At 11 1/2 years old, Heli is a beautiful old girl. Due to a shocking injury sustained while racing, she was retired at 3 1/2 years old. She had one litter which didn’t turn out as hoped, so was desexed and rehomed with Alexis’ grandma.

With all the responsibility of having a dog around the place, Heli helped to extend her life at home by another 12 months before she needed to go into a nursing home. Greyhounds are amazing therapy dogs and this is just one of the many cases where they have been beneficial for elderly or sick people. With faces like these, it’s no wonder they give people a new lease on life.

Alexis regularly visits the hospital with her dogs, in fact Kane was adopted specifically with that purpose in mind.

When he retired from racing at 4 1/2 years old, Alexis adopted him and he has spent the last 5 or so years as a therapy dog.

Having photographed this gorgeous foursome, I’ve fallen in love with Greyhounds all over again!

As well as working with her dogs as therapy dogs, Alexis is also a fully qualified canine massage therapist. Kane was a willing model as Alexis did a quick demonstration. These images, along with some of the portraits above, will be used on her upcoming website. I’ll be sure to post a link to it from my Facebook page when it’s live for those of you who might be interested in her massage services.

Alexis also works with ‘Friends of the Hound’ which is a volunteer-based, not-for-profit Greyhound adoption program covering from the Northern Rivers area of NSW through to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. These guys do a great job of matching Greyhounds that are surplus from the racing industry (and there are a lot of them) with suitable and loving homes.

If you’d like to find out more about adopting a Greyhound through Friends of the Hound, please visit their website www.friendsofthehound.org.au. Make sure you check out their Facebook page too – www.facebook.com/friendsofthehound

Photo Session ~ Red and Darrah

Posted on 29 December, 2010 by admin

After my recent trip to Adelaide, photographing the gorgeous Lexie and Chloe and also Gus and Ollie (blog post to come!), we embarked on a road trip heading home to Queensland via a couple of stops. We stopped in for a couple of days in Millicent, a little town on the South Australian coast, and stayed with a family friend and her two gorgeous dogs.

Meet Red. He’s a striking looking Wolfhound with the most amazing eyes.

And Darrah, who is a Kangaroo Dog. They’re a type rather than an official breed and come from Greyhound and Scottish Deerhound origins, with the rough coated versions referred to as Staghounds. They were specially bred in Australia to hunt game such as kangaroo and later to help control the feral fox, rabbit and pig population. They were also used to protect livestock.

For more information about this breed, see the Australian Kangaroo Dog website.

Darrah was brought home as an 8 week old pup. She has the sweetest nature and just wants cuddles and pats from whoever she can get them from!

Her big bro Red was rescued from an abusive home at 12 months old. He is very sweet but is still afraid of some people when he meets them, especially men. It took a couple of days for him to trust my partner enough to let him close enough to pat him.

The scenery there was gorgeous. We took the dogs for a run in the field next to the house and they were at home in the long grass, their colouring blending almost perfectly with the tall fronds.

This is the view seen the most, head down, tail up.

Both dogs are much loved members of a family.

Red absolutely adores his Mum!

Thanks for having us stay Elaine!

New 2010 Calendar – Great Danes

Posted on 7 December, 2009 by admin

By 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.

Personal ~ Playing with Film

Posted on 11 August, 2009 by admin

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.

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Great Dane Championship Show Sydney ~ July 2009

Posted on 9 August, 2009 by admin

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.

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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!

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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.