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Author Archives: johnbshep

20 Feb 2019
Photo of an adorable pile of cute Affenpinscher puppies arranged in a way that they look like a single dog.

Dog Photos: Best Pet Photographer Portraits 2018

2018 was our busiest year of pet photography at the studio to date! In fact, we ended up photographing three times as many dog portraits last year as we did in 2017. Which came to us as quite the surprise, considering how distracted we got earlier in the year when we realized how to pet dogs in Zelda Breath of the Wild. Creative and whimsical portraits ended up being the theme for the year. We captured a fun mix of […]

19 Feb 2019
a portrait of a fawn boxer wearing a paper crown taken with a dslr

31 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Dog Photographer | Updated 2020

Written by J.B. Shepard, professional pet photographer and founder of the Puptrait Studio in Baltimore, Maryland. For most dog lovers, our dogs are our favorite kids. While the rest of your pack might sit for school photos every year or the occasional selfie with friends, our dogs tend to get neglected. Not because we don’t love them, but because taking a decent photo of a dog can be difficult — even for experienced pet photographers. Make sure you’re hiring the right pet […]

17 Feb 2019
Collection of contemporary dog portrait art from the Paper Hat sessions

Dog Portrait Styles We Love to Photograph

Creative Pet Portrait Styles At the Puptrait Studio we tend to lean towards creating more ridiculous and whimsical imagery. When photographing more creative and surreal work, it’s just easier to work in studio. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of our dog portrait commissions are for studio pet portraits. But that is not to say we can’t produce more conservative or traditional work. Puptrait photographers are artists at heart While commercial assignments aren’t uncommon for our studio, they’re not what we’re best known […]

15 Feb 2019
ready to hang dog art mounted on dibond

Popular Styles of Dog Portraits

Written by J.B. Shepard, a professional pet photographer and founder of the Puptrait Studio in Baltimore, Maryland. What is the best kind of pet portrait? Ask a dozen dog owners their favorite style of dog portrait and you’re likely to get a dozen different answers back. Pet portraits can be created in a variety of different formats and mediums. Dog portraits can be painted, drawn, photographed – even created as rendered computer graphics (CG). Just as the medium for pet portraits […]

14 Feb 2019

How do I get my dog to sit for photos?

Written by J.B. Shepard, a professional pet photographer and founder of the Puptrait Studio. A lot of dog owners struggle to take pictures of their own dog. A fact we’re thankful for, as no one would hire us to take professional dog photos if it was easy. But you don’t have to be a professional pet photographer to start taking better pictures of your dog. For today’s dog photo tip we’re not going to discuss the technical aspects of photography, […]

13 Feb 2019

Does Flash Hurt Dogs Eyes?

Written by J.B. Shepard, a professional pet photographer and founder of the Puptrait Studio. One of the biggest misconceptions when photographing dogs is that you should avoid flash photography. We’re here to tell you that despite what you may read on the internet that this myth is simply not true. It is OK to use flash when photographing dogs. We’ve photographed hundreds of dogs and have cleared these topics with veterinary professionals on numerous occasions. How to safely photograph dogs […]

11 Feb 2019
06 Feb 2019
Fine art portrait of a pitbull pupper wearing an Elizabethan style ruff collar made of old newspaper

Design Fees Waived for Custom Ruff Collars

We have officially finished the last of our gifted sessions from the holidays, closing out some of the busiest months on record. Now that we have had a chance to catch our breath, we thought it might be fun to spend some of our newly found free time doing what we do best – making absurdly detailed costumes for dogs. A Fresh Take On a Portrait Classic One of our favorite costumes we have worked with to date is the […]

06 Feb 2019
One of the Breath of the Wild's many friendly dogs.

How to Tame Dogs in Breath of the Wild

If you’re anything like me (a huge video game nerd and a professional pet photographer), you were probably pretty excited to discover interactive dogs in the latest Zelda installment, Breath of the Wild (BOTW). This isn’t the first time that dogs appeared in the Zelda franchise, but the level of interactivity and shear whimsicalness of the canine edition to the game is arguably unprecedented. Unlike in a lot of other video games, the dogs in BOTW aren’t forced into the […]

28 Jan 2019