The Dog Photos You Never Look At
Somewhere in your phone, right now, there are several thousand photographs of your dog.
Mid-run. Mid-sneeze. Curled into a shape that should not be anatomically possible, one ear turned inside out, asleep on a sofa they are not strictly allowed on.
You took each one because the moment demanded it. Your dog looked impossibly soft, completely ridiculous, or just so much like themselves that you thought, I wish this could last forever. I want to remember this.
In almost every case, you did not look at it again.
Most of us probably have more photographs of our dogs than we could ever sensibly look through. That doesn't make those photographs any less precious. They are the muddy walks, the sleepy faces, the ridiculous positions, the evidence of a stolen snack and the look of complete betrayal when dinner is three minutes late.
They are everyday life with a dog, and I love them for exactly that reason.
The trouble is that camera rolls are rather good at swallowing things.
One photograph becomes ten, ten become hundreds, and the picture you took because you never wanted to forget it ends up somewhere between a screenshot of a restaurant menu, a photograph of the electricity meter and seventeen near-identical attempts at getting your dog to look at the camera.
Every so often, you find one again by accident and wonder how you had forgotten it was there.
When someone books a dog photography session with me in London, we have time to pay attention. I can spend it watching your dog before expecting anything from them, noticing what catches their attention, how they move and which expressions seem to appear again and again.
Some dogs want to investigate absolutely everything. Some arrive with very firm ideas about the direction we should be walking. Others prefer to take their time and work out who I am before deciding whether I deserve their attention.
All of that tells me something.
Your dog doesn't need to know how to pose. A perfect sit and an unwavering stare towards the camera have never interested me very much anyway.
I want the little head tilt you know immediately. The glance back towards you. The expression that appears when a favourite word is mentioned. The ears that do something entirely unexpected at precisely the wrong moment and somehow make the photograph better.
Every dog was born an icon.
For me, that has always meant paying enough attention to see what is already there.
London gives us an extraordinary backdrop for these portraits. Westminster at first light, Horse Guards before the crowds arrive, a quiet Mayfair street or one of those wonderful corners of the city people walk past every day without really noticing.
The location gives us the setting. Your dog gives the photograph its character, and for the time we are together, watching for that is my entire job.
What happens to the photograph afterwards matters just as much to me.
It becomes the print on the wall you pass every morning on your way to put the kettle on. The photograph your eye catches for half a second as you head out of the door. The one a friend notices and asks about before they have even sat down.
You see it without having to remember to look for it.
A finished portrait becomes part of your home. You pass it every day, catch sight of it without thinking and notice details you might have forgotten were there.
I love the hundreds of photographs we keep on our phones. They hold the muddy walks, ridiculous sleeping positions, funny expressions and ordinary little moments that make living with a dog what it is. I would never want to be without them.
Perhaps that is why I find it strange that so many of the photographs we take because we want to remember something are hardly ever seen again.
We take all those photographs because we want to remember.
Sometimes, it is worth making one we get to see every day.
