Charlotte Reeves Photography

It was so hard narrowing down images for this post! There were just so many that I loved, I may as well have just posted the whole session. Macca and Baxter are two very well loved family pets. They usually reside a lot further west (their family is from Roma in Queensland, about 7 hours west of the Gold Coast) but lucky enough to be brought on holiday with their family. How lucky are these two!

Our session was at The Spit dog beach on the Gold Coast. It was a rather windy afternoon! We started off with some shots of the dogs and their human siblings.

Then moved to the shelter of the dunes where we were blessed with some calmer conditions and lovely late afternoon sunlight, perfect for candids! This is Macca, he’s the older of the pair and just loves chasing his ball and being with his people.

The younger of the pair is Baxter – he just loves to head off and introduce himself to potential doggy friends!

Together they make a lovely matching pair – alike in looks but actually pretty different in personality.

Their human sister just loves them, I’m sure they get lots of cuddles like this when they’re at home.

While Macca was quite happy to hang around and play ball with his family, Baxter was much more interested in exploring. I love the shots I did get of him though, what a sweet face. And yes, those ears really as as soft as they look!

Here’s Baxter scoping out his next potential doggy friend further down the beach.

Macca was quite content to just sit around, hoarding his beloved ball.

Then Baxter joined him for some fun and games.

After I was sure we had enough nice ‘dry dog’ shots in the dunes, we headed down to where the dogs were dying to get to – the water!

Being spaniels, these two were right at home in the water, even if this was only their second time at the beach in their lives! They were soon racing through the whitewash, chasing balls and having a grand old time.

As we were leaving the beach and walking back to the car, the sun came out from behind some clouds and provided some beautiful sunset light. It was almost a pity they looked so wet and bedraggled looking, but hey at least they look like they’d been having some fun!

Now living in Brisbane but still loving the beautiful Gold Coast, Dallas and her Mum were more than happy to come back down the coast for a photo session and agreed to a very early morning shoot on the dog beach at the Spit. We were greeted with amazing light, perfect weather and blue skies, well worth the effort to get up so early!

Dallas the black Labrador is just one and a half, and already she and her Mum have a visible bond.

Wherever her Mum was, Dallas was sure to be found – well except when she was off meeting and greeting other dogs like your typical friendly Labrador!

Sometimes shooting into the light can be as rewarding as shooting with it, and the following couple of shots are no exception, probably my favourites from the session.

You just can’t beat the crisp clean feel of early morning light at the beach though.

I was warned that Dallas was ‘just a bit obsesssed’ with tennis balls, and she soon found one to bring to us, demanding a game.

Who could resist this look?

As you can probably tell by the sand all over her nose, Dallas was justly rewarded for her patient modelling with lots of ball throwing.

What a beautiful, happy girl. We had such a fun morning, thanks guys!

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.

I met Ralphy the four month old American Staffordshire Terrier and his Mum at our local dog beach for this photo session. Being a puppy and a staffy, this little pocket rocket was full of beans and eager to explore everything in sight.

Who can resist that staffy grin.

I think Ralphy must have been a lifeguard in his previous life. He loved it up in the dunes, looking over ‘his’ beach.

Ralphy to the rescue!

Or perhaps not.

Something a bit different.

The one on the left makes me laugh every time, it captures his personality so well.

Towards the end of the session he finally slowed down for a rest, frog legs and all.