Three American Staffies, ranging from a young 2 year old to an old 13 year old makes for quite a mixed bag of temperament and energy, at least for the younger two...not so much for the eldest.
With mum and Dad along for the pet portrait session making into a family session. We always love to see the whole family get in on the session, there's nothing more wonderful and touching then seeing the love between dogs and their humans.
Sometimes, not very often but on one or two occasions we get multiple dog households who start roughhousing during a session. Normally, if it does happen, it never lasts for very long, but this time the two younger dogs really go into it. So we went with it.
I've uploaded these photos as a seperate group lower down in this post as I think they should be presented on their own as a seperate thing. It really is mesmerising looking at the frozen images that look like something completely different from what was going on. They were playing but in the photos it looks like they were seriously fighting.
I'm reminded of a book I have on my bookshelf titled "Charles and Saatchi, the dogs" by photographer Jean Pigozzi. He created a series of his dogs playing, taken up close in high contrast black & white, using bare flash, giving the whole thing a raw look adding to the contrast between the reality of the play and the impression that the photos convey. Of course the lighting we use in our pet portrait session is very different. All the same the result of catching these dogs at play and seeing the results frozen makes for a very fascinating study in motion and shows how dramatically different a story can be by changing your perspective.
