“Best of 2024” is probably a misnomer – what qualifies as ‘best’? What judges say? If so, what judges? I’ve received very different feedback from different judges on different images. So, we’ll just go with my Top 10 Favorite photos of 2024. These are in no particular order, as I love them all for different reasons. Read (and view) on and you’ll see why I like each one!
Kenzo belongs to a neighbor of mine who joined me up in the Uintas for one of my last trips of the Fall before the fire effective shut down Mirror Lake Highway (it didn’t but I didn’t want to go up there and risk being caught by changing winds, and more importantly, I didn’t want to add to the traffic of the fire fighters and support people). This handsome, handsome boy is 15 years old, and while he’s slowed down quite a bit, he definitely enjoyed his trip to the mountains – and his swim in Butterfly Lake. His eyes, the fur, and the colors in this image just suck me in, every time I look at this.
This was from an Infinity Session (for senior or terminally ill pets). The owner is also a photographer and wanted to go for less traditional and more dramatic photos. This involved some very scuplted light, snacks, and a very patient 14 year old dog. There were so many from this session that I soul have picked, but I am really fond of the ones where the dog is very clearly looking at someone/something (in this case, his Mom).
This image is a favorite of mine less for the image itself (although I love the fog, and the feeling from it) and more for what it represents for me. This was from my first trip to Los Angeles to spend time with my mother-in-law (I hadn’t spent a lot of time with her, by myself, before and I was a bit nervous about that – but now I’m going back every other month, so that worked out fine!). I was also getting near the end of Embark and I was panicking a bit about getting a water photo, so a friend from Embark hooked me up with a friend of hers in LA who hooked me up with the owner of two dogs. I hadn’t been to LA since I was a kid, certainly hadn’t driven anywhere in LA, and had no idea what to expect. The fog was terrible and I got lost on the way back to my mother-in-law’s condo and ended up on the 405 freeway, but the entire thing was a grand adventure, and I loved every minute of it!
This is another photo from Los Angeles, when I visited in December. I love this one for many of the same reasons that I love the last one – it was an adventure. This time, there was no fog (obviously) and it was a beautiful December day. Sally’s Mom is my mother-in-law’s great niece (I think) and has ferocious games of Scrabble with my mother-in-law on a weekly basis. I like Sally and her mother quite a bit, and our trip to Will Rogers State Park Beach was a nice afternoon adventure for all of us. Sally is very much a ‘Momma’s girl’ and while I got a lot of photos of Sally that I really like, her with her Mom was perfect.
This image makes my heart sing, and has me going to hug my dogs all in the same moment. Jasper was 13 years old (I love senior dogs, if you hadn’t noticed!) and his health was failing him. His Dad wanted to get some photos of him while he was still feeling good. The universe was smiling on us, and in a week of weird, snowy, sleety, yukky weather, we got a window of magical weather and light on the Jordan River Parkway in South Jordan. I took a lot of photos of Jasper and his Dad, as I wanted to make sure I got the ‘perfect’ moment. In all honesty, there is no one perfect moment – all the moments they shared were perfect. This is just my favorite photo of the two of them. The love just leaps out of the image. Sadly, Jasper crossed the Rainbow Bridge a few weeks after his photo session.
I have a hard time picking my ‘favorite’ photos from the Uintas, because there are so many that I love! I have posted a lot of my other favorite photos from the Uintas here, and here, so I thought I’d post one I hadn’t posted before. My trips into the Uintas with a good friend from Kamas and her dogs was a big highlight of my summer. I think I have been spoiled by all the natural beauty outside my door (I have amazing hiking trails 0.3 miles from my driveway!) and I hadn’t been up to the ‘high mountains’ in the Uintas in ages. Going up into the mountains this summer (and we’ve barely scratched the surface of places we want to hike) was absolutely magical – the mountains are breath-taking (sometimes literally, as we are at 10,000+ feet) and the experiences are awesome, in the truest sense of the word – I am filled with awe and wonder every time I go up there.
This is another photo that came from my Embark challenges – one of the photos. This is obviously not a dog in water (again, look at other posts for those!), but I loved the interaction of Mom and Moose (that is the dog’s name) as she is encouraging him to go get the tennis ball!
One of the things I really like about this image is that it is also representative of me getting out of my comfort zone. I went to the dog park with my camera (I didn’t take my dogs as I can’t control them and take photos at the same time!) and watched and waited for something to happen. Because I didn’t want to seem like a completely crazy person, I explained to people that I was taking photos for a class, and asked if I could photograph their dogs. As an introvert, this was harder than it might sound, but I can talk about dogs and photography all day long (trust me…) and while approaching complete strangers was a bit of a stretch for me, I’m glad I did.
Another image that makes me want to go hug my dogs immediate. Toby was 15 here. I originally met him when he was 9, and had been diagnosed with cancer then. His cancer was quite manageable, and when his mother called me this winter to see about more photos, as Toby was getting on in years, I was thrilled. Toby was unsteady on his feet here, and didn’t hear particularly well, and didn’t see very much, but he enjoyed his time outside with his mom, and even gave me a few smooches. Toby has always been special to me; he wasn’t the first senior dog I photographed, but he helped me grow my sense of incorporating things he had done when he was younger (he used to enter human running races with his Mom and had a bunch of medals from that) to help tell his story.
I have posted this photo before, in my most recent awards post, but I LOVE this photo. This was not the photo I had been hoping to get from this session (I start with an idea, but then do what the dogs want to do!) and that is part of why I like it so much. I also just love that this dog and her sibling and her mom came to Park City specifically to help me with a photo challenge, and that they were all willing to meet me on Main Street at 6:30am to get photographs. I love that Rizzo is almost hovering over the sidewalk, bow in her hair, a girl about town.
I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t include at least one of my own dogs in my Top 10. However, I did take many fewer photos of my dogs this year than I have in years past. This was, in part, because I was working so hard on the Embark challenges, where I needed a handler for the dogs and the specific challenges. And it was a lot of fun to reach out to past clients and people on my mailing list, as well as total strangers on Nextdoor to find dogs to photograph. But, my dogs weren’t left out. There were plenty of photos to make the annual calendar for family and friends, as well as to put on my parents’ and mother-in-law’s digital frame. (Seriously, best present ever!)
I have about 20 other images in my ‘Top 10 Candidates’ folder that I could have included. These just spoke to me as I wrote this. But looking at the images I picked, I think it sums up my photography at this point in time. Some studio work, although I tend to go for dramatic lighting when I do that, but mostly outdoors, warm morning or evening light, with lots of natural colors (browns, yellows, greens, and some blues) and a strong connection between pets and their people.
2024 has been an incredible year for my photographic development; earning my Certified Professional Photographer title was the first step in my on-going journey to becoming a better photographer, and Embark, as well as the Intermountain Professional Photography Association competition are part of that journey. And the journey isn’t really about awards, but trying new things, shooting new places, meeting new people, and expanding my world as I expand my skills and begin to realize some of my creative visions.
To all of you who have been a part of this journey, and to those of you would like to be a part in any way (dog models, following the blog posts, hiring me to photograph your own dogs) I cannot thank you enough!
Dogumentary Pet Photography
