You have hundreds of photographs of your dog on your phone. Maybe thousands. You scroll through them sometimes or a memory pops up, a Tuesday two years ago when they were doing something completely them, and you smile and keep going.

But what happens when you lose the phone?

I'm not asking to be dramatic. I'm asking because I know exactly what that loss feels like. Not the phone but the photographs. The ones that were never backed up properly, the ones that lived only in one place, the ones that you assumed would always be there because they always had been.

I left a dog behind.

His name was Odin. I was in New Zealand. He was in America. The relationship ended in the early part of the pandemic. Odin stayed in the US. Going back became impossible as the borders closed, and eventually the window closed for good.

I do have some photographs of him. A handful of good ones. Moments I'm glad I caught, images I still look at and feel something land in my chest. But I was only beginning my journey into pet photography when Odin was in my life. I was still learning what these photographs could be, still developing the eye, still figuring out what I was trying to do with a camera when the subject was an animal I loved.

Looking back at those images now, I can see myself reaching for something I hadn't quite found yet. They're precious to me, genuinely precious, but they're not the photographs I know how to make now.

That's a particular kind of regret. Not just that there weren't enough photographs  but that I didn't yet know how to make the ones that would have lasted.

Odin is a large part of why I became the photographer I am. The loss of him, yes. But also those early photographs imperfect, searching, the beginning of something. Teaching me what I was actually trying to do.

There's a difference between documenting and honouring. The phone does the first. A portrait does the second.

The phone is not the problem.

Let me be clear about something, because I don't want to be misunderstood here.

Phone photography can be genuinely wonderful. The camera in your pocket is the best camera you've ever had access to, and the spontaneous images it produces have a life and authenticity that no studio portrait can replicate. Those thousands of images on your phone are real. They matter. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

In fact, I run workshops specifically for dog and horse parents who want to make better images on their phones because I believe in this. Learning to see your animal well, to catch the light and the moment, is one of the most worthwhile things you can do.

But even the best phone photography has limits. The images it produces are fragile  living in one device, backed up intermittently if at all, retrievable only by scrolling, experienced only by you.

They deserve more than a phone scroll.

What a portrait actually does.

A portrait on the wall is different. Not because it's more beautiful. Though often it is because of what it does to the space it lives in. It becomes part of the house. Part of the morning. You walk past it every day and it does its quiet work.

One of my clients, Karen, lost her horse Buddy a little while ago. She still has her coffee with him every morning. In his portrait on the kitchen wall. He's still at the table. He's still part of the day.

"Every morning I sit in the kitchen looking at his portrait and have my coffee." — Karen

You don't have to lose the phone to understand why this matters.

You just have to love your animal. Which you already do. The portraits that mean the most are made in the ordinary years, when there's still time to enjoy them.

So this is the nudge, if you need one.

Not because anything terrible is about to happen. Just because time passes faster than we plan for, and the phone in your pocket is not the same as a portrait on your wall.

Your animal deserves the portrait. And honestly so do you. If you'd like to improve your everyday phone photography in the meantime, come and find me at a workshop. And when you're ready for the portrait, I'll be at the field edge, waiting.

With muddy boots and a full heart,

Jules x