JoJo the Australian Shepherd loves to work, move, and have fun. He loves chasing rabbits, loves the water, and given the choice between sitting still and jumping into a river – there’s really only one outcome. So of course when the time came, Mali chose my Warrandyte river location for their Session.
While she booked her Session in March 2026, we’d been talking about getting her into my calendar for months. Unfortunately, JoJo had teeth surgery that needed time to heal properly. Once he was fully recovered and feeling his best self again, Mali then booked in – making sure I knew we wanted to protect his still healing gums, especially if they wanted to use toys or food during the Session. That kind of care matters, and I’ll never fault someone for thinking about their dogs wellbeing (but also – don’t leave photos too late where you don’t get the chance to do this pain free).
We booked a sunrise Session at the river in Warrandyte in late March, hoping the start of the cold mornings would give us some light fog over the river. But in the days leading up to their Session, we’d had full on storms, and when I went down to check the location beforehand, the water level was significantly higher than usual and the current was stronger. I was concerned enough that I filmed it and sent the video to Mali to check if it was safe for JoJo. She’d said he’d 100% jump in, so I wanted to make sure he’d be able to still swim safely. In the end, Mali said he’d be fine and we went ahead with the Session as planned.
On the day, it was rainy, which ended up working out pretty well. There was enough rain to bring out the texture in JoJo coat, causing some crinkly bits to appear, and with his coat dripping with water we got some great effects! This, combined with the soft, diffused light from the cloud cover made for some really beautiful portraits. We started while JoJo was still relatively dry, because once we gave him the go-ahead he was gone, and straight into the river. He jumped in, swam around, came back out, and went straight back in. He did it at least five or six times. He was completely in his element and entirely unconcerned about the current or the water level or anything else going on around him.
By the end of the Session we’d managed to capture a great range of images showing how the morning, and him got progressively wetter and wetter.
Mali and Mike knew they wanted artwork to hang on their walls of JoJo by himself (because he’s gorgeous, so why wouldn’t you?), but they took a while to make the decision. From what they told me, it came down to having too many good options to pick from that it made it hard.
In the end, they ended up choosing two images I’d edited as their samples to be framed in 40x60cm matted wood frames. This size is a great size for to really show off all the detail in JoJo’s fur, and all the water droplets on him, coming off him and falling.
The frames arrived last week, and their reaction was pretty straightforward. “AMAZING, stunning, very beautiful!” Sometimes that’s all that needs to be said. And I’m looking forward to their reaction to their digitals (they’re sadly delayed due to an injury to a finger that I keep hurting when trying to edit).