I was honored when Erin Browning from The Oxford Hotel, one of the best and most notable wedding planners in Denver called to create a portrait of she and her husband and their cherished family dogs Jesse and King. Jesse is a border Collie with strong will over King who is a sweet Boxer that is totally Blind. Yes, King has no eyes at all. He still runs around and plays just like any other dog and on a quick inspection you wouldn’t have a clue that he is completely blind. He will occasionally run head on into things but he seems to shake it off and keep on going. Dogs can be one of the hardest subjects to photograph. Getting them to look in a certain direction is something they really don’t like to do much. With King I thought to myself, how do you get a blind dog to look at you? My normal tricks of throwing things and jumping around like a deranged lunatic were unnoticed by King. Finally I thought does it really matter if he is looking. Many of my best portraits of people have them looking in another direction. Then I tried to capture King and Jesse as they normally are. Once Erin and Jake saw the images, they gravitated toward the images that were more natural and free. This is true with the exception of one image. They wanted me to create a fun image of their family that was inspired by a Snoop Dogg album cover image from “No Limit Top Dogg” but with their own twist. This was to look like a studio image with distinctive lighting and much emphasis on the family and each dog wearing a tee shirt and gangsta chain collar featuring a pad lock clasp. To make this even more interesting we were going to create this image in the tundra around a high alpine lake at nearly 13,000 ft in the Colorado mountains. Yes, this seemed ambitious and to top it off we had gusty wind and cold temps in the high 30’s. I love a challenge, and fortunately so do Erin and Jake, so we charged ahead and I am so glad we did. This image will be a 20×40 inch print in a black frame that will hang over their fireplace as a conversation piece.
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