Yes, Christmas is coming and with only a small number of weekends left available before the printing cut off, now is the time to book if you wish to get art work before Christmas, either for yourself or as a gift for someone else.  I will still be booking shoots after this and throughout the Christmas period, but orders will not be able to be completed until the New Year.

This month has been really busy with lots going on.  I had some lovely shoots with clients, catching the last of the summer colour on Albury Heath before all the rustic Autumn reds appear and some emotional viewings with some great feedback and reviews.

I am planning some new types of artwork next year which I am very excited about and can’t wait to show everyone and so put a call out for black and white dogs to help me test the logistics of getting the shots I would need.  I was inundated with over 50 dog offers from all over the country which was great and lovely that so many people were being supportive.  In the end I had to choose just a few in a localised area as it was an experiment with no guaranteed outcome.  I am in the middle of the shoots as I write this and it has been so much fun meeting the dogs and I am learning a lot about what might be possible.  

I initially tried a few things out with our dogs, but Gemma has been photographed from an early age and if I get my camera out she knows what she’s supposed to do.  Merlin is more difficult as he tends to do what he wants and not what you would like but we did manage to get some shots of him - his first official photo shoot (see below).  We also took him and Gemma up to heath for a joint shoot as we don’t have many pictures of them together which was fun.

The Set Up:

Merlin:

The biggest challenge is that it is one thing to photograph your dogs in their garden with people around that they know, this is easy.  But to turn up and try to photograph dogs in their space, with people that they don’t know and to try to get them to pose in front of a screen which is all unfamiliar and feels strange under foot.  This is proving to be more challenging. But everyone is having fun and it is forcing me to think more creatively with at the shoot and during the editing process.

So thank you to everyone I have met and have yet to still visit, I look forward to sharing my work with you later in the year.