Like most people switching careers, photographer Grace Chon found herself miserable. She was a stressed-out art director at a large advertising agency. Like someone in wet clothing stuck out in the cold, she needed a change while still being authentically herself. “…I ultimately decided to return to my childhood love of photography and bought an entry-level DSLR,” Grace tells the Phoblographer in an interview. “I started volunteering with a dog rescue by taking headshots of the dogs to help them get adopted, which turned into a side hustle pet photography business. After about 9 months of juggling my full-time job art director gig and the photography side hustle, I went all in on photography and never looked back.” Unlike the myth of Orpheus, she succeeded — clearly.
All images by Grace Chon. Used with permission. For more, please visit her website, Instagram @thegracechon, podcast and Hey Retriever
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How Dog Photographer Grace Chon Gets Her Moments
These days, Grace shoots with the Canon R5 — she loves the autofocus and the high ISO output. She mates it with the 16-35mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm lenses. These help her cover everything she needs. “Each lens tells a different story and I love choosing the lens for the story I want to tell,” Chon states. “If the environment is a big part of the story – like I’m outdoors in an epic spot – 16-35 is my go-to so I can capture more of the scene. It’s also so fun to use for wide angle portraits on pets.” She uses the 24-70mm lens to capture candids of animals and their humans while the 70-200mm is better for action shots. When she needs to shoot really nice portraits, she reaches for her 50mm f1.2.
Dogs look so cute and hilarious when their heads look huge in a portrait!
Grace Chon
The Moment of the Best Dog Smiles
Obviously, Grace’s background has helped her with making compelling images. She learned while working in advertising that it’s all about a great idea and execution both working together. “Crafting a great idea is excellent creative problem solving – You have an idea you want to communicate, and you have to make sure you’re showing the idea in the strongest way possible,” she says. “I like to look at an idea from all angles and think a lot about how to push ideas to be even better, considering if there is a more interesting or entertaining way to tell the story. This definitely comes from years of training and working as an art director in advertising, because the goal is always effective communication told in the most interesting way possible.” This essentially is the idea of always keeping your technical and artistic brain connected. But what it also entails is staying in tune with your own emotions to capture moments that are perfectly picturesque.
She’s photographed some of the most famous dogs in the world, but the ones that impact her the most are the rescues. She worked on a job for LA Animal Services a while back on a rebrand and had quite the experience. “The dogs I photographed were so sweet and loving, and it was really sad to know that many were likely never going to make it out of the shelter system,” she tells us. “So many beautiful, hopeful faces that end up being euthanized. I wish I could have brought them all home with me.”
Thoughts on AI Imagery
Anyone can go to an AI image making platform and find images of dogs. She thinks AI is a tool, and ultimately it’s up to the artists to make something with it.
“It’s the same thing with a camera – it’s a tool that can create mundane things that look like generic stock photography, or incredible things that make people feel something. I think a lot of AI projects out there can be really boring and mediocre (akin to generic stock photos), and then there are some AI projects out there that blow your mind in the idea and execution of it.
Grace Chon
What she’s most concerned about is how AI models are trained and infringement. She hopes companies will move toward training models with proper licensing, compensation, and artist consent.
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.