Of Course Your Dog Won't Cooperate.
Almost every inquiry I receive includes some version of this sentence:
"I just want to warn you — my dog is kind of a lot."
And then comes the evidence. He won't sit still. She only listens when she feels like it. He's obsessed with squirrels. She barks at everything. He's three years old and still acts like he's three months old. She is, and I'm quoting directly here, "a menace."
Here is my honest response to all of this:
Good. That's who I'm here to photograph.
The Wrong Goal
The goal of a professional session is not a perfectly behaved dog.
If it were, most dogs would be disqualified immediately, and frankly, most of the photographs I'm proudest of never would have happened.
The goal is to photograph your dog. The specific, irreplaceable, only-one-of-them animal who has opinions about everything and communicates them clearly and makes your life both harder and richer than it would be without them.
A dog who cooperates perfectly in front of a camera is a dog performing. That's not what I'm after. I'm after the dog who's so distracted by the interesting smell in the grass that their ears go soft and their whole face goes somewhere else entirely. I'm after the wiggle that happens every single time you say their name in that voice. I'm after the thing they do that you describe to people at parties and nobody believes you until they see the photograph.
That's the session I want to make.
What I'm Actually Looking For
When a client tells me their dog is "a lot," I start asking questions.
What are they like when they first arrive somewhere new? What's the thing they do when they're really happy? What treats make them forget everything else? What's the quirk that drives you absolutely crazy and you would give anything to have for twenty more years?
These are the details that make a session. Not the sits and the stays.
Because here's the truth: I can work with almost any dog at any skill level. I have tricks for the dog who won't look at the camera. I have strategies for the dog who only wants to run around. I know how to get a stay from a dog who's never been asked for one in their life, and I know when to give up on a stay and make something better instead.
What I can't replicate is who your dog actually is. That's only available once.
The Photographs You'll Love Most
After hundreds of sessions, I can tell you with confidence: the images clients remember forever, the ones that they talk about when I see them years later are almost never the ones where the dog was perfectly still and looking directly into the camera.
They're the images where the dog was doing that thing. The specific, identifying, unmistakably-them thing that you could recognize at a thousand paces.
A perfectly cooperative dog gives you a nice photograph.
Your actual dog gives you something that makes you cry a little when you open the album.
Bring me your menace.
Bring me your squirrel enthusiast.
Bring me the dog who is, as you said, a lot.
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