We thought it might be fun to share our latest costumed pet portrait commission that we photographed at our dog-friendly photo studio in Baltimore City. Our subject, Harry, is a 90 lb senior terrier-mix rescue that traveled to us all the way from Rockville, Maryland during a snowstorm for a medieval knight themed photoshoot.
Having worked on our long-running pet costume series Paper Hats for over the last decade now, it’s rare for us to receive a client inquiry requesting a concept that is completely new to us. This session was one of those beautiful exceptions.
Harry’s people have two daughters, who are of course their little princesses. And, as Harry is their scruffy little protector, they wanted to see if we would be interested in attempting a visored knight helmet — something along the lines of Don Quixote, Super Grover or the old King Arthur myths.
And massive fans of all things fantasy — including D&D, Maryland Renn Faire, and Game of Thrones — you can imagine our delight when Harry’s people asked us to make a visored knight helmet. So, we told Harry’s folks, if you’re willing to make the trip all the way up from Rockville, Maryland to shoot with us in Baltimore City, we’ll find a way to make it work and bring their vision to life.
With any new attempt there are always unforeseen snags. And oh boy, as expected photographing this dog helmet was one heckin learning experience.
We’ve included a few phone pics at the end of the BTS, just so y’all can see what we were working with. We had originally planned to keep the long back, hoping it would help counterbalance the leveraged weight of the visor.
But what we didn’t account for was the just how much this senior guy would slouch. Fortunately, having made the costume ourselves, we were well equipped to modify the helmet mid portrait session.
We ended up slicing off nearly a foot of material off the back so that it could rest comfortably. As the removed section was already painted and textured, we were able to reuse that section internally to supply a bit of padding and wedge up the front of the helmet — ensuring a snug but comfy fit for our senior friend.
As promised here are a few phone pics we captured behind the scenes…
All of our costume designs begin as sketches. It is how we first start to make sense of the pet’s measurements and where the initial pain points begin to make themselves apparent. Working with found and imperfect materials, like cardboard, forces us to be cognizant of size limitations. When making costumes for larger breeds we are often forced to breakdown designs into smaller and more practical sized pieces. The downside to this approach is that it has a tendency to quickly complicate builds and compound measuring / rounding errors. And if you look for the asterisks, you can see the exact moment we decided to scale back the design to something a bit simpler.
This was a quick phone snap of our initial build. At this stage, the visor was securely attached to the base of the helmet. But it wasn’t attached in a way that made sense mechanically. From here we ended up adding two triangle shaped hinges, so the visor appeared to be attached to the side of the helmet, rather than simply glued / floating on top. And, if you compare this pic to the final photographs, you can see exactly just how much of the rear of the helmet we ended up removing to accommodate Harry’s neck and shoulders.
This is a quick cellphone pic that we took of Harry under the house lights in his full getup at the end of his costumed portrait session at the Puptrait Studio in Baltimore, Maryland. Notice that the muted light green background seen here does not appear in the final shots. This isn’t an editing trick or Photoshop magic, but rather a practical effect that was accomplished by tweaking the lighting in camera. By hitting the light green paper with blue gels we were able to achieve an almost ethereal blend of sparkingling sapphire and emerald tones. And by deactivating the background light, we were able to underexpose the paper, bringing up the saturation in camera, and lend the paper the deep forest green that you see in the other final shots.
While the session started off as a new and undoubtedly scary experience for Harry. As you can clearly see in the final bts pic, the little guy was all smiles in the end and a little happier for the time (and treats) we shared with him.
Ready to Book a Costumed Portrait Session for Your Favorite Pup?
Note that all of our pet costumes are handmade to order. Please allow a minimum of 2 weeks when booking a Paper Hat session to allow sufficient time for costume construction and design.
