How do you photograph love?
Happy Valentine’s Day! Today you and I celebrate our loved ones with our loved ones. As a photographer of people and their pets, I’m hired to capture in photographs the bond and feeling people are experiencing in their heart. How does one begin to photograph LOVE? I think about that every time I pick up my camera. To start unpacking the emotion, I ask myself, “what is it that my clients love?”.
A moment in time
When people ask me to photograph their (furry) family, they want me to document this moment, the way life is right now. I hear urgency and appreciation. They LOVE this moment in time. Their puppy or kitten is still small and terribly cute. Their toddler is still a toddler, taking wobbly steps and falling over on the bum all the time. They still have their dear old dog with them although they know that the day of goodbyes is nearing. Or, their adult pets are at their prime, still strong and full of life. Life is never still. We and our circumstances change constantly. This moment in time is all we have. Tomorrow may already be different.
Characters
People love their pet’s personality and character. Clients with active, healthy pets always want to have images of their pets in their element, what their pet loves doing the most. When they are watching our pets having fun, playing, running, fetching, jumping or doing funny things, they feel happy because it signals that life is good and free of worries. Images showing their pets doing what do they best bring back the feeling of joy they felt when they were watching it happen.
Characteristics
When people love someone, they also love their characteristics. In pets those endearing details are the ears, the nose, the paws, the tail, the hair and the face. People look at them so often that they not only learn to adore the silky ears and beady eyes but they also learn read their pet’s emotions from those details. They know exactly what that look in their dog's eyes means. When they say a special word that only their dog knows, those ears perk up a certain way or the tail starts wagging. There is so much emotion in the little details that people want them captured in photographs. These types of images are very personal because only they know what the characteristics signal and because only they love them as much as they do.
People also choose certain breed of pets because they love the breed characteristics. They love the sleekness and the speed of their sighthounds, short-leggedness of their corgis or heaviness of their mastiffs. Before a session, I think about how I can best show the aspects of my client’s pet’s appearance that they find attractive.
A place in time
People also love certain places. They want to remember the environments that they enjoy and appreciate. A garden or a park looks amazing during a certain season. A forest where dog owners walk with their dog every day becomes a special place filled with emotion because they have spent such great times there with their pet. A rare visit to a special place may be worth documenting in images. I listen carefully to my clients to find out what places they find closest to their heart. The physical setting of the images captures the love people feel for that place.
Thinking about what love feels like helps me to get to what love looks like in photographs. As L. M. Montgomery put it, “[n]othing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.” Wearing with my heart on my sleeve certainly helps me in my quest to create meaningful images for my clients.
