This was a really fun session for me, I must admit. Dad Dino was the high bidder of a pet photography session with me and because we live close to each other we decided to meet at one of the gorgeous Los Angeles parks near us for a late afternoon with Sailor.Sailor is magnificent. We started off the session with her running. The sun was casting beautiful golden light and she just ran after the ball like a thoroughbred. We got several action sequences before moving on to some family portraits with Dino and his husband David. Now you never think you're going to need more light when the sun is pretty bright but that's usually exactly what you need so I set up one light to get a quick series. ...

You guys, you guys, you guys! I'm so excited, can you tell?! We just got in three new hand-painted canvas backdrops. What does that mean? Vanity Fair/Annie Leibovitz styled pet portraits!The colors are brown, blue and green and they are completely awesome. No, these are not your daddy's Old World Masters backdrops. These are very contemporary and make for extremely dramatic portraits. They really fit well in a styled shoot or a formal portrait. They are made by Gravity Backdrops and they came all the way from Serbia.Now, for this kind of look, I have photographed on gray or dark blue seamless paper and added on a texture and it kind of mimics it. But the seamless doesn't have the depth the ...

You know the Birth of Venus, right? That gorgeous Botticelli masterpiece depicting Venus emerging from the sea to ride to the shore on a shell, blown by the zephyrs and clothed in finery? I was lucky enough to see it in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence quite a few years ago and it left a lasting impression. Botticelli, you have a future in art, I think! Don't let them tell you otherwise!Well, I'm between pet shoots right now, just working on some corporate and acting headshots, and I got to missing my animals. I thought of lovely Luna, the border collie mix I adore and who has been the subject of so many of my practice composites. Now I won an award for the photo I was thinking of so Luna had ...

I met Luna (and her brother Beemo) at my latest Maxwell Dog ice cream social. She was four months old then and I was absolutely mesmerized by her Border Collie blue eyes. Her dad, Chris Nguyen, is a dog trainer and Beemo, though not Luna, had tricks you would not believe.I had an idea of a shoot I wanted to do. I had been preparing for this photo shoot for quite a while. It involved an eye chart, a pair of trial glasses, and a dog. When I finally got everything in place, I contacted Chris to see if he and Luna would do the shoot -- those eyes, you know -- and he was amenable.Trouble is, though trial glasses are quite accommodating to humans, they aren't so accommodating to canines. And when ...