Full of beans and with confidence to spare, Yagmur high-stepped towards the water. As his paws came into contact with the soft, waterlogged sand and it gave away slightly underfoot, I could see the change in his bearing as his forward movement wavered slightly. Curious and as yet undeterred, he ventured further, braving a closer approach to the pounding surf. Looking around briefly to check his beloved mum was still close by, his attention was diverted at the critical moment when a huge wave crashed and broke, sending a sheet of water speeding up the sand towards his feet. When that unexpectedly cold and wet stuff suddenly touched his feet, Yagmur's flight mode kicked in and he shot directly up into the air!

Luckily, I had my camera at the ready to capture Yagmur's hilarious reaction.

Yagmur's first visit to the beach just happened to fall on the day of his photo session, so his mum Ayse and I had the pleasure (and amusement) of witnessing his reactions to this new and mysterious environment. He loved the soft sand of the dunes, but as we found out later in the session, wasn't quite so enamoured of the whole water thing to start with. Luckily this changed quickly and he was soon trotting around in the shallow water like a bona-fide beach bum.

Back when I was a Gold Coast resident, my favourite place to take my dogs was always The Spit - a great off-leash dog beach north of all the famous surf beaches. Along with the expected wide open spaces of water and sky, there's also some grassy green areas in behind the dunes, just off to the side of the path to the beach. This is where we started off shooting as I used copious treats to make friends with (and help to focus!) this outgoing young man.

Imagine spending 4 years with the furry love of your life, only to have to (after exausting all the possibilities) make the heart-wrenching decision to move overseas for work - for an indefinite length of time? Yagmur's devoted mum Ayse has had to do just that - but before she left she booked a Deluxe Session with me as she wanted some gorgeous memories to take with her of her pride and joy.

With the sun getting low in the sky, we headed to the dunes for some more portraits in the long dune grasses, backlit by the warm afternoon sunshine.

And lastly we headed to the water, where Yagmur had his first encounter with the waves. For the first 15 minutes or so, there was a lot of this going on!

But Yagmur soon started to settle and enjoy the cooling water after a warm day, while we all enjoyed the pastel tones of twilight creeping in to bathe the sky and water.

Disclaimer: Being a typical arctic breed dog, Yagmur needed to stay on-leash throughout the session for his own safety. The leash has been edited out of all the images above, just like in the image below where you can see pre-leash removal, and after.