My Favourite Pet Photography Session From Last Year.
Throw Back To That Time I Photographed 7 Golden Retriever Puppies.
One of my favourite moments for 2022 was having the opportunity to photograph a bunch of golden retriever puppies! I mean what’s more fun, than something that doesn’t understand you and just wants to pull on your camera strap? Talk about a challenge - and one that I welcomed at that!
The Story Of How I Came To Photograph A Litter Of Golden Retriever Puppies In 2022.
If you don’t already follow @eloisesmith_ on IG you should. Not only is she an entrepreneur herself, but she’s also a fellow dog mum/dog lover and she truly has heart of gold. She’s beautiful inside and out.
She also runs an Instagram account for her now, 3 doggos - all golden retrievers - @bodhi.mila.kendrick and I believe it was through this account that I discovered her beloved Mila was going to have her first (and possibly only) litter of puppies.
I, like many others, became invested, checking in on the gram daily to see how the pups were going. But no one could have been more invested than what Eloise was. Not including the actual puppy making itself (that’s a whole other story that I’ll let El explain if you’re that intrigued!) and the weeks leading up to the birth, Eloise dedicated 8 huge weeks to just these puppies.
The idea of raising puppies initially sounds all sweet and cute. But what you may not think about is the fact that there is more than just one or two of them. This story in particular - there were 7 of them! 7 little adorable but helpless golden retriever puppies. From making sure that they each got their share of milk from Mama Mila, to keeping out of trouble, the multiple vet visits and the sleepless nights keeping them clean and safe, El struggled to leave the house for more than an hour at a time.
Honestly the way she described it all, to me it sounds way harder than having an actual baby - at least with a baby you only have 1 or 2; 3 maybe if you’re one of the lucky ones. You can chuck them in the pram and get outside for a walk! Show me a pram designed for 7 newborn puppies that don’t want to sit still! Puppies generally need to wait for all their vaccinations before they can truly start investigating the big wide world on their own paws too.
And are you ready for the grossest fact of all that I learnt??!
Mama dogs eat their puppies poop! Cue the spew face emoji there! Sure it saved El from cleaning it up initially, but I imagine watching that lesson unfold was almost as gross as it comes haha!
I think one of the hardest parts of raising puppies though, has to be the 8 week mark, when it’s time for them to leave the nest so to speak. After well over 1300 hours of constant care and love for these pups, there came the time when they needed to find a new home and a new family.
Knowing that the puppies were growing well and looking as cute as ever, I reached out to Eloise and offered to come and photograph these little beauties before they left her to go to their fur-ever home, so that she would always have the memory of these incredible beings she helped to create.
I had never photographed puppies on this scale before, so I wasn’t 100% sure I could pull it off. But of course, like I had done all year, I went and proved myself wrong! I think in the future I might suggest photographing 5 or 6 week old pups, as by 8 weeks these guys were rip roaring and ready to roll, but with a little patience we got some of the most cutest images.
I turned up to Eloises home South of the river in Perth, and was initially greeted by 2 happy doggos, Mila (the puppys’ Mama), and Bodhi (essentially the puppys’ Uncle) before walking inside, to meet all 7 sleepy, but excited little puppies. I brought all my gear with me, backdrops, stands and lighting included and we pushed furniture back in corners to create the space that I needed to set everything up. If the puppies had already had their vaccinations, then I would have suggested hiring a studio, but in this case, Eloise’s home was the safest and easiest option.
The one goal photo I had in mind was to get all the puppies together! And because they were on the move so much, I had to really brush up on my photoshop skills, merging multiple photos into the one image - almost breaking the computer in the process (It’s ok, I’ve upgraded to a laptop now and am currently living that fab laptop life AND photoshop opens with the speed of lightening so no more complaining there). After almost a whole day though - we did it! I’m so super proud of the group image I created!
It was such an honour to get to meet these puppies, play with them and photograph them. Each puppy went home with an individual portrait of itself too because puppies just like all animals, grow WAAY to quick, and it’s so easy to forget how little they once were after only a year or even 6 months!
Eloise had already decided by this point that she was going to add a 3rd addition to her growing tribe of floofs, and had chosen Kendrick to be the lucky fella. So once we’d finished with the group portrait images I also set aside some extra time to get a few stinkin cute af images of just Kendrick. Clearly he was just born to be a pupfluencer!
I’m also a fan of a few fun and bright quirky images of your pets, so I swapped out the natural coloured backdrop for something a little more out there and pulled over my piece of acrylic that I have. We then dropped a little bit of milk onto it and of course, like the star he is, Kendrick was all over it - I mean just look at those puppy teefies!
