Rescue Dogs

I love all dogs.  Whether packaged as a 4 pound Chihuahua or a 180 pound Mastiff, at their core, they’re still “dog”.  That said, there’s a special place in my heart for rescue dogs.  Somehow, they all seem to know how lucky they are.  You can’t spoil a rescue dog.  They just never seem to take any act of kindness for granted.

I was thrilled to recently have the opportunity to work on an editorial submission on training rescue dogs.  In addition to plenty of images in my archives to choose from, I called in some rescue dogs to model for the occasion.   Whenever we’re doing an editorial shoot, we start with a specific “shot list”, mostly stuff we want to try if the dogs are willing.  We also like to do a variety of traditional portraits and some shots of the dogs just having fun.  The first round was done mostly indoors or in the studio.  There are some recent photos of my dog Nikon posted in a previous blog entry for this assignment.  Here are some of the other dogs that modeled for me.

Of course, we needed a photo that would really tug on the heartstrings.

I love straight forward portraits, simple lighting and no post processing tricks.  It’s all about the subject, not about the photo or technique.

I also love exploring the interactions between species.  Here, Zoe and a kitten from our adoption center are introduced.  Zoe is normally great with small critters.  On this occasion, there was an attempt to make the kitten a snack.  Luckily, Zoe’s mother, Dr. Wallen was holding the kitten and she has very fast reflexes. She quickly commanded Zoe to “leave it”.  The kitten was unharmed and didn’t seem to have a clue about the near miss.

In addition to the studio sessions, we did some location shooting at a park and at the dog beach.  Here are some of the images from the beach.

On the right is Sarah, my hard working assistant. (actually she really did work hard despite having the flu.  She’s just taking a much needed rest).

I love shooting at the beach, especially near sunset when the light is simply gorgeous.  What I hate about it is the light disappears and then it’s time to go home.  As we were packing up, I noticed these two swimmers.  I couldn’t resist.