A billion years ago I asked you to share questions, and I never did get around to answering them all. Bad, Angie!
Sophie, Dixie and Harles asked: How did you end up in pet photography and pampered puppy? I dream of being a dog photographer and would like to hear about your journey.
That’s actually probably two stories, so I’ll tackle the photography half today, then give you guys the back scoop on PP tomorrow.
Photography – pet, or otherwise – wasn’t really a dream for me when this all began. In fact, I’d had many pro photographer friends try to teach me photography, to no avail: F stops and apertures just would not stick in my head. Like the movie, I’d have brief awakenings where I’d get it for a few hours but then it would all fall out again. Which wasn’t a big deal: after years of dealing with photographers and photography in my work at a stock agency for four years, I had no desire to get serious about photography.
But… I did love Pampered Puppy, and wanted to grow it. I wanted something I could put up daily to engage folks, interest them, personalize this whole web site experience… and since I loved taking snapshots of Merry anyway, I thought this might be a good way to go: a photo a day.
My first few photographs weren’t much to write home about, though I did occasionally come up with good ones. But the quality, at that point, wasn’t really important. That I kept practicing was the most important thing. And slowly, I started to learn more about my camera, mostly from fiddling and trying to get different shots of the pug, but also from a growing pile of books and magazines on photography on my bookshelves and tables.
More importantly, I think, for me, was that I was shooting the same thing every day. If you’re off trying to shoot portraits one day and pets another and landscapes a third, when you’re just starting out, you’re going to find it slow going indeed to get better at one type of photograph… though, of course, you’ll get better at photography in general the more you practice, no matter what kind of shots you’re taking. But the hyper-focus on Merry, needing to come up with new dog photos every single day, helped me to learn how to shoot pets at a much faster rate.
I came to love photography. I learned to see light, and fall in love with shape. My photos grew from snapshots to fully composed portraits to what, in a few cases, might be considered art (or at least, that’s how I look at them now). But my eye is always changing, improving, and I find looking back at pictures I took three, four, five years ago daunting. I remember loving certain shots and being so proud of the work they took to accomplish… and yet today, they look snapshotty to me. My favorite photos are almost always from the past three years, and that’s a sliding scale, always moving forward with me through time. My eye, along with my skills, improves daily… but that’s also because I keep practicing. I look at a lot of photography. If you’re interested in becoming a photographer… you, too, need to look at a lot of photography, and not just pet photography. Find other styles, other topics, other visions that inspire you.
Now, it’s five years later, and I’ve been shooting pets professionally for a couple of years, and last year in January hung my shingle as a full-service pet photographer in Toronto. I’ve had the honor of meeting some fabulous clients over the past year – a few of my favorites you can see on my pet photography web site.
So, my advice to would-be photographers of any stripe is this: photograph every day. If you don’t have your camera in your hand every day, you’re not practicing enough. Take it to work with you. Walk around the house with it strapped to your wrist. Get ruthless about your editing, too – half or more of good photography is knowing which photograph to keep, which photograph to show. I still take bad shots. :) But you don’t see them! And make sure you’re looking at other photography. It will help you to learn the visual language of photography, and develop your eye, so that you know which shots of your own to keep, and which to throw away.
Well, Sophie, I hope that answered your question! I’ll touch on the beginnings of Pampered Puppy tomorrow. Have a question for me? Leave it in the comments!
