Good dog photography begins with paying attention

It was Ollie’s fifth session with me.

His mama brought this boxer puppy to me for the first time five years ago, for portraits with her and her husband. Ollie hadn’t been outside his own little world much – a few trips to the trainer, a little daycare. This wide open field was all new to him: tall grass, wildflowers, a trail.

So much space to run and jump and be a puppy.

And then we found the river. He hadn’t been to a body of water yet. I remember it clear as day – this little boxer puppy threw his whole face into the water and started blowing bubbles.

I shit you not. Bubbles.

This little boxer puppy, blowing bubbles in the river as though he invented the idea.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Mama wanted updated portraits. Who am I to say no?

We went back to that same field, the tall grass, the wildflowers. We ran and we jumped and we played, like two middle-aged women letting a 5-year-old dog just be a dog.

And we went to the river.

This time I was ready for it.

I wanted to see if he’d blow bubbles again. He wasn’t inclined.

I wanted him running through the shallows along the shoreline – a shot I could already see in my head. He didn’t want that either.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t really watching Ollie in that moment. I was watching my own back catalog. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a folder from six years ago, and I was trying hard not to shoot anything that matched it too closely. I already have one of him like that is a sentence a guardian says when a photographer hands over a set that feels recycled, even if the two sets are five years apart.

I wasn’t thinking about Ollie’s afternoon. I was thinking about my sales.

So there I was, at a river, with a dog I’ve known his whole life, half-chasing a memory and half-dodging it, and Ollie wasn’t cooperating with either version.

He gave me something else instead. Shake shots – that full-body blur right after he came out of the water.

Water dripping off his jowls, caught mid-drop. Not on my list.

Not avoiding anything on my list either. Just what he actually did that afternoon.

When a dog doesn’t want to do something, I listen. I spent too much of my early years in this work stressing over what a dog didn’t want to do – trying to coax him, wait him out, try a different angle.

I don’t do that anymore. I work with what’s in front of me.

And looking at the jowl shots now? I see a dog who’s more comfortable in his own skin than the puppy who blew bubbles. More in tune with the land, the water, himself.

Through photography and studying experiencing grief – both anticipatory and the agony that comes in The After — I’ve thought a lot about presence. It’s become something of a north star, the word I reach for when I want to say a photograph feels alive instead of posed.

That has started to matter more to me than agenda. Or, in photography terms, the shot list. And maybe we should be more suspicious of it, because agenda is what presence is actually competing against, session after session.

A shot list isn’t the enemy. Every one of us walks into a session with some version of one – a plan for the light, a plan for where the dog will probably settle, a plan built from what a guardian told us matters to them. You need that. Showing up with nothing is its own kind of carelessness, not a virtue.