I want to start this blog post by saying - I gladly knelt in dog shit for these photos.
Devon reached out hoping for a last-minute pet portrait session for 4 cardigan corgis. Of course, I sputtered "absolutely" while trying to mime "CORGI PORTRAITS" to Sam, who had rushed it to see what I was delightedly squeaking about. We got snowed out of our original session date, but our rescheduled date was perfectly sunny and probably the warmest we'd get for December.
There were 4 dogs: Stella, Sam, Sapphire, and Simon. We had to photograph each dog individually, releasing the next dog after ushering the previous one back inside. Devon's backyard was an easy landscape, with beautiful grass and trees filtering in the afternoon sunlight. Because of the direction of the house, it would have been impossible to do the session in the morning due to all the shadows, but the afternoon glow surpassed all my expectations of December in Portland.
Every single pup was fiercely food-motivated. The toys were simply barriers to climb over to get to a treat. They had eyes only for Devon, and rarely cared enough about the weird high-pitched fart and "brrrbrrrburrrpp" noises I made for an hour to try to get their attention. No ball, rope, or word enticed them. I got a few rare glimpses over at me, but they were pretty sporadic and random. It's rare when a dog's eyes and ears don't follow the sound of my camera's shutter (I shoot with a Nikon D750), so this session had me busting out every dog-captivating sound I could.
And yes, I accidentally knelt in corgi poo, but who hasn't?
