I LOVE PUPPIES. They are sweet, soft, loving, playful, vulnerable and incredibly snuggly. But 40 puppies in the course of 48 hours with Nikon Gear? Well, that was a whole new level of wonderful madness.
This brand new campaign for Nikon has the most complex and wonderful combination of subjects I am lucky enough to photograph yet! FORTY tiny little, sweet, adorable puppies paired with a huge variety of brand new Nikon gear.
And HERE are the results, free for you to keep and share as you wish!
For this brilliant shoot, we rented out a large commercial space that has giant cyc walls painted a clean white. Nikon HQ shipped us a bunch of brand new Nikon gear. Lights and equipment were set up. As well as puppy gates, blankets and pillows. And we greeted all of our on-set Puppy Handlers, which is a real job description for these shoots.
And then got to work.
Because “Work” included welcoming puppy after puppy after puppy, we had to constantly wipe away fur, dust, puppy licks. As well as all the “gifts” they kindly left us while setting up shot after shot.
Keeping the Nikon gear dust, fur-free AND in position while constantly being knocked over by 12 puppies going in 12 different directions was not easy. I know that this gear is tough, but it is definitely confirmed with all the puppy chewing. Because they didn’t even leave a mark, hah!
I shot the entire campaign with the Nikon Z7 mirrorless system. Also paired with the adapter for F-mount lenses for a variety of images.
Here’s a BTS video of our two days of shooting, to get more of a feel for it: https://www.nikonusa.com/…/puppy-love-one-photographers-que…
We are so grateful to Peak Lab Rescue, Farm Friends Rescue, and so many others, for offering up even more of their time and effort so that we could photograph these sweet little pup faces.
SO IF YOU ARE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A NEW PET, PLEASE CONSIDER THESE GREAT RESCUE ORGANIZATIONS!!!
And a BIG thank you to Nikon – it’s incredible to work with a client who knows what they are looking for while offering a huge amount of creative freedom to the photographer.
Specific thanks to The Idea Man Mark Soares, the awesome Michael Corrado, our on-set marketing wunderkind Brian Hettrich. Also to each member of our extremely helpful campaign project group: Nick Moy, Marc Cutler, Marie Fallarino McKinley, Jessica Cruz, Carmelina McGuire and Judith Paul. Thank you to Diane Berkenfeld for the great piece she put together on Nikon’s website: https://www.nikonusa.com/…/puppy-love-one-photographers-que…
Major props to Kim Williams Pollard, our Studio Manager, for meticulously checking in and out an *enormous* amount of gear, as well as orchestrating tons of model releases while also working to set up, break down and very actively assist on all of the shoots.
And more major props to our Special Projects Producer Rhesa Versola for also helping to set up and break down both days – and for all of her rather detailed pre-production efforts, coordinating shoots with so many puppies from so many places (wow, such an effort!), as well as filming on set, too.
And big gratitude to Robert Cummins for filming the shoots, assisting with lighting, bringing more great energy to the shoot, and creating our puppy BTS!
