ABOUT ME

For me it's all about the dog. I get the whole ‘doggy world’ now. As you will see from my pictures any ‘humans’ in the image are secondary. I’m not there to take portraits of the family. If there are any ‘close’ pictures of you and your dog I prefer to do these in black and white and from behind unless they are of your dog and your boots! Most of my pictures are done outside in natural light.

So, here is where you find out about me. This is where I wish I could put down I have been a photographer for 10, 20 + years. This is where I wish I could put down I have award winning photos. Unfortunately, I don’t. If you had said to me, ‘in 5 years time you’re going to be a dog photographer’ I wouldn’t have believed you. I can hear my husband now ‘your’re not selling yourself Maddy’. He would, he’s been in sales all his life. I’ve been in the airline industry most of my life. Instead I will tell you how I have got here in this very short timeframe. 

Going back about 8yrs now I bought a compact camera to take landscape pictures. I wanted to learn how to take pictures in manual (professionally) and take some images of our beautiful town and countryside. It was very slow going and I also realised quite quickly that I needed to upgrade my camera in order to accommodate different lenses. I did this just before the pandemic but didn’t make much progress. During the pandemic we bought our furry four legged companion, Penny. We had umm’d and aah’d for years about getting a dog but could never commit and went down the cat route. We thought it would be something we couldn’t do until we both retired. Our lifestyles changed so much during Covid we thought we could go for it, much to the happiness of our daughters.

I cannot believe how much our lives have changed since bringing Penny into our life.  

I didn’t pick up my camera for a whole year during the first lockdown but when I eventually did, a conversation I had with a salesman at my favourite camera shop, changed everything. In that afternoon I went from landscape to dogs! I could say the rest is history. I have spent hours and hours learning as much as I can online and with photographers about dog photography and editing. In 2023 I did a diploma in photography. I have spent the last 2 years taking pictures of people’s dogs so I can practice. A lot of the time people say to me I should be charging for my shoots but I wasn’t quite ready. Now I have my own website I feel I can really get started. It’s very exciting but also scary at the same time. Feel free to take a look at some on my Instagram account @maddyspawtraits, if you like what you see and it’s something you’ve always thought of doing but the prices have put you off why not take advantage of my low prices.

I am the wrong side of 50 and sometimes ask myself ‘what are you doing Maddy’. Doing a sit down job for starters would be easier at my age. I’m one of those 50yr olds that has scraped by with minimal tech ‘stuff’ and wouldn’t have entertained Instagram if it wasn’t to show my photos. I hardly touched Facebook prior to this. Youtube has become my best friend!

Brave or mad!

I remember thinking ‘I don’t want to get to 65 and be thinking I wish I’d done this 10yrs ago’. I don’t consider myself a ‘professional’ photographer and I’m learning all the time. This is reflected in my pricing. A doggy shoot with editing can take 4/5 hours of my time so my fees reflect this.