Basset Hound Puppy

The thing that we love about our pets is that you can talk to them and they don't understand a thing that you say and they really don't care. They just want to be loved and fed and played with occasionally.

That's great unless you are trying to photograph them which usually means that you need a certain amount of cooperation from your photo subject. Ah well, therein lies the challenge and the fun of shooting animals. You have to come down to their terms and just roll with whatever happens.

Reilly was a new addition to our neighbor’s household a couple of years ago. They decided to come by and visit. So, I turned the impromptu visit into a puppy photo shoot.

I gave Reilly's owner, Andrea a CD with the pictures. She said that she realy loved it. She has them on her computer at work as the screensaver and that it has been a great conversation piece at the office and just makes her happy to see baby pictures of her now grown basset hound now and again.

Pet photos would be really good as part of a photo show on an electronic picture frame. Especially if you have limited wall space that you would rather reserve for finer art and more precious family photos. You might not want to stare at Fido all of the time but, he or she would certainly be a welcome image on a screen for a few seconds or minutes once in a while.

The electronic picture frames ("digital photo frames" in the industry parlance) are especially great for anyone stuck in a fixed location for a certain amount of time like at a desk or in a hospital bed. Now they even have really small digital photo frames that can fit on a key ring with your car keys. So, you can take them with you. Some of them are very inexpensive. Amazon.com even sells one for less than $10.

Renee's Family Portraits

Renee and I became friends when we both had daughters on the same softball team. Always “the guy with the camera,” I would shoot the softball games and just post the photos online for the other parents to enjoy. I also took a lot of pictures of the girls off the field, the parents and the sibling kids who also came to the games. I just did it for the love of the art and to record my own kid’s childhood. I had never really put myself out there as “available for hire.” I found the offer to shoot her family portraits was very flattering.

There were some obstacles to getting this shoot done. The biggest was the weather. Even though the photographs might look warm it was actually a fairly cold evening. We tried a few concepts that night and between sessions we would go back to the cars and warm up again.

Dallas the St. Bernard looks like a docile fully grown dog because he’s so big but, at the time he was actually still very young. So, imagine a 90 lb. puppy that you are trying to keep contained so that you can shoot his photograph. Dallas is a great dog. In the unlikely event that Chrissy ever decides to give him up then he’s welcome in my home.

We shot these photos on a high grassy hill near Trophy Club, Texas. I tried to arrange a morning shoot as the sun was coming up but, that wasn’t going to work so well with the kids. Evidently they’re not morning people. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to have phot subjects with not yet awake faces. So, we went for the evening shoot. I planned it to have them there just before sunset then we would shoot as the sun was going down on the horizon.

I think that the end results were quite nice. The warm looking golden glow of the setting sun transcended the actual frozen bones of the portrait models.

Renee told me that she and the family really enjoyed the photos that they were really happy with the results and that the temporary discomfort and effort was all well worth it. What a gratifying feeling for me the photographer. I’m really pleased to be opening a new door, so to speak with this passion of mine and to have the opportunity to take it to a new level. I have to pinch myself that people are paying me to do it

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