What Sets Paw Prints Apart?
  1. 1.Our pictures tell the whole story. For a 60-second run, I typically take 30 to 50 pictures. Sure, I catch the jumps, but I also capture the bound up onto the table, the dive off the teeter, the wild circling between jumps, the power burst onto the A-frame, and the joyous leap into the handler’s arms at the end of the run. I move along the side of the ring to get shots from the best angles. From our photo series, handlers often say, “Oh, that’s why he ran that way!” or “Now I see what I’ve been doing!”
  2. To put it another way, a lot of photographers stand or sit stationary at one point beside the ring, and they photograph just one obstacle during an entire class. So you might get two or three choices of shots showing your dog at the tire jump. That’s it. I do things differently. I take as many shots of different obstacles as I can—and everything in between. For many runs, I get just about everything from the start-line stay to the celebration at the end.
  3. 2.I take more photos in a weekend than most people take in a lifetime. On a typical agility or obedience weekend, I take between 5,000 and 20,000 pictures. Rebecca sits down with each customer who stops by to review photos, and we stay at the event as long as people want to review images. Rebecca spends careful time with each customer, helping them select the best-quality images, pointing out the pros and cons of various shots, and making sure they’ll like what they buy. In this way, they can see dozens of full-sized and even enlarged pictures on the screen before they buy them—not just a handful of reduced-quality images on a website. But for those who can’t stop by our booth or who want to see more images later, we offer the online second-chance galleries. See the Agility page to check those out.
  4. 3.We do professional-grade image processing. With my thirty-plus years as a professional photographer, I understand using available light to produce the best possible pictures in each setting. After each event, I spend time doing painstaking color correction, balancing, and cropping—all by hand. No other photographer that I know of provides that level of service. Most of them do no cropping at all, or they use only “machine” cropping. By comparison, we talk to customers to find out exactly what they’d like cropped in the images they select, and we often do cropping on the spot so they can see the result immediately.
  5. 4.We focus on the photography. I’m a photographer, and that’s what I do best. We don’t offer shirts or flags. Instead, we provide the best images possible. But here’s a twist: For the images we sell, I don’t retain the copyright. Buyers are always free to use their images however they want for noncommercial purposes. They’re free to go to a shop that specializes in transferring photos to various products. Meanwhile, I’ll be busy producing more photos!
  6. 5.We provide portrait services. At any event where it’s possible, we set up a portable portrait studio. No other pet photographer I know of does that. We capture shots of victorious dogs with their ribbons, dogs and handlers and judges, dog kisses planted on people’s cheeks, rambunctious puppies, and even dog-and-cat or dog-and-kid combination shots. As needed, I can retouch the photos to remove leads and people. In that way, I can produce photos of five or six dogs that seem to be standing perfectly together. Check out the examples on the Portraits page.
  7. 6.We work on location at people’s homes or at other sites to capture their dogs (and other pets!) in the settings where they’re the most comfortable. For a typical photo session, I take between 15 and 50 shots. The owner or handler reviews them almost immediately on the computer and makes selections.
  8. 7.We use all professional-grade equipment. From the $5,000 Nikon D3 camera to the Epson professional photo printer that fills the top of a desk, I use the best equipment I can buy. I also use archival inks and paper. And I use Adobe Lightroom software, the professional standard for image processing. As needed for complex retouching, I also use Adobe Photoshop.