Sofia & Kiro

I thought it was very special to be able to not only visibly see the love Sofia and Kiro have for one another, but also to capture it for Sofia and her mom.

This session was one of my more special ones to photograph.

Sofia and her mom reached out to me to try and schedule a photoshoot for whenever I was soon available. Their goal was to photograph Kiro, their family doggie, and Sofia together to show their bond and love, and to have these photos to treasure and have forever. Kiro at the time was very, very sick. They wanted these photos to remember him by because they knew time was very limited with him - immediately I said yes and wanted to try and make this happen for them! We decided on a location pretty quickly, and we had our scheduled session not long after the planning started!

When we got to the location the day of the shoot, dark and thick, heavy clouds were trying to roll in and cover the sky (of course!), making our nice and sunny day a little more gloomy. And it happened out of nowhere! I remember when we all got out of our cars, that was one of the first things we mentioned. Where did all these heavy clouds come from? But, it was okay! As always, a little dark sky doesn't hinder the beauty of photography. We were able to get a ton of great shots of him with Sofia.

I told her my goal for the session was to just photograph them as they are; I wanted it to be as effortless and authentic as possible. When we first started, Kiro needed some incentive to even look my way: he got to eat McDonald's cheeseburgers! And he devoured all of them. And it was only 10 minutes into the session, haha! After those were gone, it was a lot of calling out to him, "Kiro! Look! Kiro!", and me running back and forth to get something, anything. If he ran the opposite way, I was running and snapping. If he decided to lay down, I was crouched to the ground. I think I got an entire week's worth of a workout in that hour long session. No kidding, the next two days I was completely sore and had difficulties walking down the stairs!

One thing Sofia made sure I anticipated was a lot of water breaks for him. I told her, no problem at all! We will go at his pace. The medicine he was on made his mouth really dry, which made him pant a lot, and made him incredibly thirsty pretty frequently. And part of his ailment was having a hard time breathing. It didn't help that the humidity was at a 10 that late afternoon. Kiro was a very lively dog, so he was running around and playing so much during our session! I could tell it was wearing him out quickly. It must have been frustrating to have all that energy, only for your body to be so tired. So we took an infinite amount of breaks for water and to catch our breath. And it was great.

I thought it was very special to be able to not only visibly see the love Sofia and Kiro have for one another, but also to capture it for Sofia and her mom. It truly felt like such an honor to be the one they chose to capture such a special circumstance. Kiro did pass not long after we did their photoshoot. Sofia's words to describe him were the sweetest and my heart felt so heavy for them. I pray these photos serve the purpose to bring about happy memories on days when I'm sure it feels very dark and heavy. I think they turned out so, so beautiful. They sure do bring a smile on my face when I look at them remembering the day.