“Oh no, I don’t need to be in any. It’s just the dog.”
If I had a biscuit for every pet owner who has said that to me, I’d have three very happy French Bulldogs.
You booked a pet photoshoot because you want beautiful photographs of your dog. I completely understand that.
They’re the star of the show.
But I’m still going to encourage you to get in front of my camera for five minutes.
Because you probably already have hundreds, possibly thousands, of photographs of your dog on your phone.
How many photographs do you have of the two of you together
Your dog is part of your family
For lots of us, dogs aren’t simply pets.
They’re there when we get home. They follow us from room to room. They appear on family holidays, sleep in places they absolutely aren’t supposed to sleep and somehow manage to take up 80% of a bed despite being 20% of its size.
They’re part of the family.
Which is why, when someone tells me they don’t need to be in their dog’s photographs, I will usually give them a little nudge.
Not because I secretly want to turn their pet photoshoot into a portrait session for them.
Because the relationship between you is part of their story too.
But I hate having my photograph taken
Ah. There it is.
Often when someone says, “I just want photos of the dog”, what they actually mean is:
“I don’t want photographs of me.”
And I get it.
You might feel awkward in front of a camera. You might worry about how you look. You might think you need to know what to do with your hands or produce your best catalogue-model smile.
You don’t.
In fact, some of my favourite photographs of owners with their pets happen when they aren’t looking at me at all.
Cuddle them. Talk to them. Scratch that spot behind their ear. Let them lick your nose if that’s their thing.
You concentrate on them.
I’ll worry about the photograph.
That photograph isn’t really about what you look like anyway.
It’s about what you look like together.
Your relationship doesn't have to look a particular way
Not every dog is a snuggler.
Some want to be permanently attached to you.
Some show their affection by sitting vaguely nearby while pretending you don’t exist.
Some are gentle old souls.
Some are furry tornadoes.
Some have a job to do.
And some will spend the entire photoshoot making it abundantly clear that they have their own ideas about how things should proceed.
I don’t need your dog to perform for me, and I don’t need the two of you to recreate somebody else’s idea of the perfect pet portrait.
I want to photograph your relationship.
That might mean a cuddle.
It might mean a paw on your knee.
It might mean the look they give you when they’re waiting for the next instruction.
It might mean complete chaos.
That’s the good stuff.
And yes, they belong in the family photograph
I also hear the opposite occasionally:
“We’d love a family photograph, but can we bring the dogs?”
Erm… YES.
If they’re part of your family, they’re welcome in your family photographs.
They don’t have to sit perfectly.
They don’t all have to look at the camera simultaneously.
And if your family photograph involves several humans, two dogs, a small child and approximately seventeen different opinions about what everyone should be doing…
Well.
That’s why you’ve hired me. 😂
Sometimes the photograph where everybody is beautifully looking at the camera is the one that ends up on the wall.
Sometimes the one you love most is the photograph taken three seconds later when everything falls apart.
Both count.
Your family changes. Photograph it as it is now.
This is perhaps the biggest reason I encourage you to get in the photographs.
Things change.
Children arrive. They grow up. Dogs get older. Families expand and shift.
And photographs have a funny habit of becoming more valuable as time passes.
photographed Sully the St Bernard with the newest member of his family, baby Arwen.
At the time, it was simply a beautiful photograph of a much-loved dog meeting this tiny new human who had joined his world.
Recently, Arwen’s mum messaged me to tell me that sadly, after his health deteriorated, Sully had been put to sleep.
She told me how thankful she was that we’d taken photographs of him.
And that stopped me in my tracks a little.
Because when I pressed the shutter, nobody was thinking about what that photograph might mean later.
It was just Sully and Arwen.
A moment in their family’s story.
Now it’s something else.
We don’t always know which photographs are going to become important to us.
You don't need to wait for a reason
You don’t need a milestone.
You don’t need a puppy’s first birthday.
And you certainly don’t need to wait until your dog is elderly or unwell before deciding it’s time for photographs.
Sometimes the reason can simply be:
They’re mine. I love them. And I want to remember this.
And while you’re here, let me take a few photographs with you in them too.
You don’t have to buy a new outfit.
You don’t have to practise posing.
You don’t even have to look at the camera if you don’t want to.
Give them a cuddle.
Let them be themselves.
I’ll do the rest.
Because one day, you won’t just want to remember what they looked like.
You’ll want to remember what you looked like together.
Ready to get in the picture?
f your camera roll contains 4,872 photographs of your dog and approximately three of you together, perhaps it’s time we fixed that.
My pet photography sessions are relaxed, flexible and very much led by the animal in front of me. Excitable, shy, elderly, stubborn, won’t sit still, can’t be off lead, convinced they’re actually a human…
They’re all welcome.
And so are you.
