What's in an album

I recently delivered an album to my cat-owning customers Kylee, her mother Lori and uncle Larry. The family owns two Siamese cross cats, Poppy and Willow. One very large and ginger in colour with a striking resemblance to Garfield, the other small and slim, almost white with some patches in her face and the tail. Willow is still a young kitten and colour changes are apparent even between the original shooting date and now.

An album is a fully customized book, based on 10 double spreads. The book is constructed so that there are no folds in the centre so that images can be placed across the full double spread. I produce these albums in 12"x12" and it usually includes 25 to 30 images from the shoot. 

Here are Larry and Kylee as they receive their customized album "Poppy and Willow".

Poppy has a good look too. She is almost life size in this double spread image.

I was so happy to see how pleased Larry and Kylee were with the production. To get your own album of your cat, dog, horse, rabbit or your whole family - contact me!

Like a family picnic - well of a very large and dog loving family

On Sunday 11 September 2011 the SPCA held its annual Paws for a Cause event in Stanley Park, Vancouver. It was a lovely day and had the feeling of a big family picnic.  People of all ages with their dogs of all sizes came to Lumberman's Arch to have a good time, chat with vendors and other animal lovers and show off their dog's good looks and talents - OK, also their own good looks and talents.

At 11.30 the sporty crowd went for a run, while at 12.00 the fun-loving crowd got their dogs in a row, ready for a 3km walk in the park. Dogs of all sizes and abilities participated!

I had a table at the Community tent and sponsored the prize for the popular look-alike contest. Glad I was not the judge with all those good looking look-alike teams....

The jury - read the audience - had a hard time to select between these talented participants. Susannah and her Papillon Gergie were just too sporty to ignore and walked away with the prize of a photo shoot and an exclusive album from PPP-Photography. With such a pretty and well trained dog it should be fun to create this keepsake for Susannah.

As per the SPCA website, they raised $740,000 during this event. Thanks for coming out and stopping by my table too. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to keep informed about upcoming events and special offers from PPP-Photography.

Making a portrait session fun!

A portrait session of your dog can be a lot of fun, if you are participating. This is what I found out on a recent portrait session with Caroline and her Doberman Resi and horse Comet.

Caroline wanted action photos of her dog at a local creek. She also was after nice portraits of herself and Resi as well as Comet that she could frame.

We started at the creek and admittedly I was a little worried about lighting. We chose the mid-afternoon when I was expecting the sun to shine onto the creek as I was hoping for fast shutter speeds. It worked!

A Doberman as retriever!

What I had not expected is that Caroline was up for the challenge and wanted to participate in the shoot to the extend as she did. This made the shoot so much fun and the image selection extremely large.

A great team!

Now Caroline has the difficult task to select her favourite images from the great variety.

But the funny part is to catch the many mimics that keep making me laugh as I look at the images and work in post-production. Priceless!

Who is kissing whom?

And again?

What to learn from this - be open on a photo shoot and you end up having a great number of wonderful images to choose from and lots of fun memories!

Contact us for your personal consultation!

Family portraiture

I recently had the opportunity to photograph a family of four. A rather sophisticated gentleman, an exuberant lady and two little ones, both girls. A wonderful portrait opportunity!

The Lechner dog family!

Every time I show this picture I am asked - how did you get them to sit still? Did you glue them down? Of course not!!! I worked with these dogs for about 2 hours and there was a constant change of the primary subjects. I created beautiful portraits of the individual dogs but also many funny group shots. As you can see, the dogs were very cooperative!
My recipe is to work with the dogs and not to expect of them to work with me. Then things seem to fall in place. If the dogs are calmer in demeanour it usually is easier to achieve but usually most dogs at one stage seem to just be natural models.

Fany - my secret favourite!

Spike - only adopted the day before the shoot!

Bambi - the big baby

Paula - the boss!

Working with four dogs at the same time gave me the opportunity to create many different images. An ideal situation for creating an album or wall display. The individual portraits are wonderful in full colour or monochrome and I think Sabine found it hard to choose.

Three dogs comfortable with each other

Capture the moment!

I wonder what he is telling her!

If you want to have an offer for a photo shoot of your family - let us know! Fun families like this one will always get preferential treatment!

Creating light!

For a change I pointed my camera at people. And not just any people - at models.... As part of a lighting workshop taught by Don Giannatti right here in Vancouver.

It was a lot of fun and I am sure many of the tips will make their way into my everyday pet photography. I thoroughly enjoyed a day full of creativity and hope you enjoy the outcome:

I really liked the creativity. Working in small teams with the objective that everyone creates different images was a challenge that for me opened the creative flow. Day 1 was tough theory, day 2 was fun experimentation.