Why I become a Pet Photographer
There’s a lot of different genres of photography; wedding, commercial, portraits, fashion, landscape, and so many more.
I get asked a lot, “Why pet photography?”
I usually give a quick answer to this and then move on, because it’s a long story.
My mom got me my own digital camera when I was in middle school, because I would either take hers all the time or she would buy me disposable cameras. I wanted to take photos of everything; people, landscapes, and of course, our pets. I would always follow our pets around just to get a photo of them.
I still love to play around with landscape photography, especially when I use long exposures. However, neither people nor landscape photography gave me as much joy as pet photography has done throughout the years.
I stopped photography for a while. I got my bachelor’s degree in music performance and then joined the Army bands. Surprisingly, this is where I found my love for photography again. In the Army, I was also placed in the public affairs office, so I would photograph the band during performances. During this time, my older sister was also sending me photos of her foster dogs to edit…which really I had no business doing at the time. My editing was so bad then.
When I got medically discharged for the Army due to hip and back injuries, I decided to pursue a Master’s degree in photography. For the first year, I used nature for my assignments. Then I interviewed a photographer who told me how important it was to find your niche. She encouraged me to look into pet photography by volunteering with animal shelters. Apparently, I had talked about my cat, Hickory, A LOT.
My first couple of months was tough and I took the worst photos I’ve ever taken, but I loved it. I loved meeting the cats and dogs, taking them out of their kennels, learning what they loved, playing with them, and learning when they needed space or when they needed love. Then I would go home to go through my new collection of photos. Slowly, I got better at photographing and editing them.
I was (and still am) obsessed with getting and editing the perfect photo. None of the other genres of photography brought out that kind of determination and love for me. I always want to be photographing pets. There’s nothing else I would rather do with my day than meet a new cat/dog, photograph them, and spend the rest of the night, cuddled with my furbabies, editing photos.
