PETS /PEOPLE

We all love pets, and when you’re a photographer, your pets become your number one photo subject. My breed of choice became golden retrievers. I really fell in love with my second golden. His name was Roscoe. The very first photograph I took of him was after a snowstorm. I submitted this image to a stock agency and it’s sold over 100,000 times—mostly as a screensaver in Japan. What I really loved was photographing Roscoe as a puppy, so I had to find other puppies to photograph. I found a person who had a network of golden retriever owners that would breed their dogs. So I would get in touch with these owners and I would schedule a shoot a day before the puppies were scheduled to be picked up. I found out a lot about shooting dogs. The best shots happened when the owners were good handlers. This means they would work with the puppies and help me set up the shots. The better the handler, the better the shots. Some other tips are: The best shots are when the puppies have their tongues out. It’s also best to work with the puppies after they’re fed, so they are calm. There are three things you have to do to get great images of puppies: one is to be patient, two is to be more patient, and three is to be even more patient.