Everything I Know about Photography I Learned from my Dog

Meet my muse, Colin. He’s a 3 year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. My husband and never took so many photos before we got this dog.

As soon as we were married, I moved to Norway and I desperately wanted a dog. Since we only have a one bedroom; a small dog. We read the want ads for a year. We called the local shelter. Everything. No doggy for us. All they ever had were German Shepherd mixes or border collies, neither of which would have been very happy in our tiny home. Not a tiny dog who needed a home in the whole county.

I got to the point where we’d go into a pet store and I’d feel the little collars. I can begin to understand women who are desperate to have children but can’t.

Eventually after a year, we decided to buy one. My parents gave me $200 for my birthday as a dog payment. Knut called various breeders and nothing seemed quite right until one evening when a woman called. She said she remembered talking to him several months earlier and her dog was due to have puppies. Did we want one? Yes! We could have the pick of the litter.

Lucy gave birth to an amazing nine puppies, all of whom survived. Lucy did have a major calcium defficiency from nursing all those babies. I suspect Colin as a major culprit since he was the biggest and fattest of all the babies.

Knut picked him out at 3 weeks when they were barely the size of large hamsters and we regularly visited him until 10 weeks, when we got to take him home. It was just great to see him grow up.

Colin has posed for more photos than anyone else I know. He’s the one who taught us directional lighting. He showed us how to take fast motion shots. He encouraged us to take films. I know hardly anything about photography that hasn’t involved him.