There's a conversation I have more often than any other in this work.

It comes from people who've lost their dog or their horse and have since heard about the With Love Remember Me sessions the quiet, unhurried photo shoots made in the final weeks or days, while there's still time to be together. And the conversation goes, almost without variation: I wish I'd known about this before. I wish we'd had that time together with a camera.

That's the conversation I'm trying to prevent. Not by telling you something is coming but by making sure you know the door exists, while there's still time to walk through it.

We never want to face it.

What I've learned from being present at some of these final chapters including the day I photographed Buddy is that the photographs made in those quiet last months are often the most important ones. Not because they document the ending, but because they honour everything that came before it.

The portraits that matter most aren't made in grief. They're made before it, while there's still time to enjoy them.

But this isn't really about the end.

The reason I keep coming back to this conversation is to make the case for paying attention now, while everything is ordinary and good and your dog is racing you to the door and your horse is nickering when they hear your car. The photographs worth having look like a life, not a highlight reel.

What the phone can't do.

Karen has her coffee with Buddy every morning. In his portrait on the kitchen wall. That portrait was made while he was still here. An act of honouring that she now carries with her every day.

That's what a portrait session is for. Not to mark an ending to honour what's already there.

The nudge, if you need one.

Most people who contact me have been thinking about it for a while. Next season becomes next year. Next year becomes later. And later, occasionally, becomes too late and someone is telling me they wish they'd known about the With Love Remember Me session before it came to that.

A discovery call is free and takes twenty minutes. You don't have to commit to anything.

But you'll know, pretty quickly, whether this is the right time. It probably is.

With muddy boots and a full heart,

Jules x