One of my favorite locations to photograph dogs is in downtown Muskegon, Michigan.

The best time to photograph in urban environments is always early in the morning, before the shops open, the sidewalks fill up, and the roads get busy. This eliminates distractions and extra noise for the dogs, keeps our backgrounds clear of people, and avoids peak heat during the summer days.

In down town Muskegon, there is a heathy balance between roman, gothic, and modern architecture, including a few walls with graffiti. A public garden, green park, and a variety of landscaping along the sidewalks in the Spring and Summer, give us amply opportunity to capture that POP of color you may like in your images. All of this within a few blocks, makes it super easy to create a diverse collection of images of your dog in an urban environment.

Urban environments also provide us with a clean surface to photograph your dogs on. This is especially helpful if your dog has a longer coat that likes to collect dirt, leaves, sticks, etc., In downtown Muskegon, we have a much easier time keeping your dogs clean, without having to stop every few minutes to re-groom your dog.

During urban photoshoots, I do keep all dogs on leashes. Even the best trained dogs, simply because we’re too close to the road, and it’s too easy for them to see a squirrel and go for a chase. In my camera bag, I keep several styles of leashes, including thiner show leads for the smallest dogs, heavier leather leads for the bigger dogs, and a long 15’ leash we can use in city parks if we want to allow the dogs to play, but still be under control for road safety. These leads are always edited out of your final image, leaving it looking as though your dog was the perfect angle, posing like a professional dog!

As always - no dog training is needed to capture professional photographs of your dog! It does help when your dogs knows the basics (sit, down, stay or wait), but I am very used to working with puppy brains or show dogs, where photographing them standing, and then capturing them in a sit or down when they naturally provide that behavior, is perfectly fine as well.

Take a peak at some of the dogs photographed in downtown Muskegon! 👇🏻