This post is going to be a little odd perhaps, a little off-kilter. “Why would I photograph my pets” someone asked me recently. I guess the underlying question would be “why hire a professional to photograph my dog/cat/ferret..etc..? ”
The blunt answer is: because they will (probably) die before you and all you will have to remember them is a dark, blurry, red-eyed photo of them. Or maybe not, maybe you got some decent shots of them with your phone playing outside, because the built-in camera metered nicely for a summer’s late afternoon. Maybe you were lucky that way. Maybe…
The truth is, however, most of your phone shots are just fleeting digital moments that will never see it to the light of print. The truth is, you love your pet like your child and yet your memory of them will fade slowly over time. I know because I’ve been there, like many of you reading this post. I know because I have 1000 amateur shots of my first dog and none of them is technically good enough to be printed bigger than a 4×6. If it were, I’d most probably have a nice 20 x 24 print on my wall. Because I shared 13 years of my life with that dog and he was my furry brother. Because I had crying fits for 2 years after he died. Because he shaped my life in ways I am still discovering. Because he made me love dogs and thus made me rescue my GSD baby in the nick of time (she was 5 minutes away from euthanasia).
Knowing all this, in retrospect, what is one hour of your time and a couple hundred dollars so you can have THE larger-than-life photo to print, frame and hang on your wall, to be able to look at the heart of your past, immortalized into image forever?
