What to do before your Dog Photo Session

So you’ve booked a dog photography session, what now? Well, that depends on what kind of session we are doing. Do you want to celebrate the fun and personality of your dog? Do you want to take sweet photos of you two snuggling? Is your dog getting a little older and so you want to document this season of life? Have you gotten a devastating diagnosis and want to have an end-of-life or rainbow dog photo session? Great news is that I love to do all of the above! Lets dig into it!

Fun furry session

These can be so fun and so exciting, as well as chaotic! We can do all kinds of fun things, it really depends on your dog and their personality. A few favorite sessions I’ve done are birthdays, complete with doggie cupcakes and birthday crowns, playing with bubbles, and of course throwing the ball and playing fetch! Try and think of what makes your dog the happiest and when they’re just having the time of their life; usually it’s something we can do! 

Starting off while your doggie is super curious about me, the camera, and probably all of the smells outside, I will follow them around and get some photos of just them. I’ll focus on details of ears, noses, tails etc. Then we will move to do some snuggly photos as well as you interacting. This is where you can show off some tricks as well as your bond with one another. After this is when I’ll pull back a little and get photos of the super fun things. We can play fetch and have them run around you, play tug, chase their favorite toy; the possibilities are endless!

For these sessions, I always ask for you to bring a lot of super high value snacks. Things that they don’t usually get. Cheese or hotdogs or deli meats work the best from what I’ve seen. We will go through a LOT of them, so make sure to pack a pretty full baggie! Next, I suggest bringing a favorite toy. Sometimes it’s a squeaker that I can squeak to get their attention, sometimes it’s a fluffy toy to run around with and play fetch. For this, bring whatever will work best for your dog! 

Before our session, I will send you a Dog Photography Welcome Guide that will help give more information on preparations and what to expect. This guide has more information that I can really give in a short blog post!

I look forward to meeting you and your best furry friend and getting to romp and play around! These are such fun photo sessions and I get so excited for every one!