say cheese

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back in october (i’ve never claimed to be timely) we had the pleasure of being photographed by adrian hitt, an accomplished nashville pet photographer.  i should start by mentioning that i absolutely hate having my picture taken - the hatred is alleviated only mildly when there’s a dog with me in the photograph.  i’m finding i’m having to get used to it more and more as dave’s interest in photography increases but the idea of a “photography session” was slightly nightmarish to me.  we’ve known adrian for a few years and had been planning to schedule a session with her for a while before it actually worked out.  as much as i was dreading the actual session i was excited for the end result of some family photos.

the session was in no way a nightmare – adrian was really easy to work with and it all felt very natural.  she was awesome with the dogs and they in turn were great with her.  she was set on getting an entire family portrait, even if it had to pieced together, but after spending some time trying to make it happen it was clear the dogs were not going to comply with her wishes.  apparently a popular pet photographer trick to getting good shots of a dog is using cheese.  this trick did not translate well to our family – what it did was guarantee that she had at least 14 dogs salivating all over her (and her equipment) the entire time.

all in all it was a fantastic experience and we ended with great shots of every dog and some partial family photos we will always treasure.  because dave has become such a fantastic photographer we have a ton of great photos of our dogs so i wasn’t really expecting anything other than some group shots and at least one photo of dave & i and some dogs together.  i ended up being really surprised with so many of the individual dog shots –  the dogs looked at adrian in a totally different way than they look at us so we actually ended up with really different, equally fantastic photos of each of them.  some of them still make me laugh out loud every time i look at them (flanagan's especially is a total joy). 

here are some of adrian’s favorites:

i may have overdone it with jewel's hair in this one:

i feel so unbelievably grateful that murray was with us for this day...we lost him the following week.  adrian got some fabulous photos of him that i will always treasure.  this is one of my favorites:

i'm certain this will remain one of my all-time favorites of dave & i together:

dave will be absolutely horrified when he sees this photo that i'm sharing with you but i don't pretend to be ansel adams* which gives me the freedom to share crap.  it's important to me to share with you a picture of this wall in our house because it entirely encapsulates a moment in time.  the stark reality of the nature of the family we've chosen to spend our lives with is it's ever evolving, certainly not by our choice but by the reality of the life span of dogs.  this wall hits the pause button on our family at that time and that is extremely precious and imperative to me.  take the photo with a grain of salt but the idea of it with it's intention:

if you’re local to nashville i highly recommend hiring adrian.  if you’re thinking you have a bunch of photos of your dog and more aren’t necessary i strongly urge you to reconsider…the difference in your dog interacting with someone else creates a totally different expression than you probably normally see.  

*i'm in no way implying dave fancies himself ansel adams

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