Capturing Timeless Fine Art Portraits to Memorialize an Aging Chocolate Lab

Adam And Scott (00:00) it's, you can't get this experience anywhere else. the direction we were given and how to get her to pose and she's not a show dog. the shots that we got that we wanted to get, we were able to get easier because of the expertise in them showing us, all right, you stand here with a treat and hold it up here. And that's gonna, you know, that'll draw Lucy's attention. We had, there were treats, there were toys, there were all sorts of props. So it was Hi, I'm Adam Polst. My name is Scott Duso. I am an area director for the Department of Developmental Services for the Commonwealth. And I'm a nurse. So we use Sarah Proll's photography studio for our dog Lucy. Lucy is now 11 year old's chocolate lab. Partially why we did this is because we wanted to have memories of her. we, you know, found a Facebook ad, honestly. We won the thousand dollar credit. and utilized it so that we could memorialize her. She's still with us and is one of the loves of our lives, but we wanted to have something that was really memorable as she's getting older and health is in decline right now. when we first saw some of her portraits, what she was able to capture with the different dogs and their owners was just something that we can't do with an iPhone or a regular camera. that's what caught my eye. Well, I think when we had our first sitting with trying to figure out what photos we were going to use, which one we were going to do the big print of, we cried just in the presentation of the pictures because... it really reflected who Lucy is. and we had a really hard time in selecting one photo. ⁓ So we actually bought them all and did all kinds of fun things with was a... very touching. And I think part of the emotion, you know, it wasn't sadness. It was kind of, you know, it was kind of joyful looking at some of them. There are some shots of her that, you know, she's laying on the couch and she's got one paw up and, you know, just looking up at the light and. There's other ones where it's just a straight-on shot of her eyes And the experience itself was really nice. The people, our photographer was really warm. The whole process was really nice. We bought little stands, as you can see up here. We actually have a friend who did the portraits shortly there. six months I think after we had done ours she saw them and said oh my god I want to do this with our dog think most people have commented on them and because we've been able to incorporate it into the house it's It's a really nice feeling. It's a nice feeling to come down every day and kind of be like, there she is, you know? know, I wouldn't let the price tag, you know, scare you. I mean, I think that there are options and, you know, those options were really described, you know, out to us, I think what I'm most grateful for is the fact that it was someone who knew, like we didn't take her to a human photographer. It was someone who knew, you know, how to deal with animals and, you know, when, and she even knew like, all right, Lucy's, she's about done, she was just very perceptive to Lucy and what. needed to do or we needed to do to accomplish getting the photographs.