Through the Lens of Grace Fieselman: Pet Photography in Action

I have always been drawn to capturing dogs in motion. There is something so neat about freezing that perfect moment that happens in less than a second of time.

Winning this award makes me feel beyond incredible. It feels like all my time and hard work have finally paid off.

I choose photos to submit based on what I feel has the most impact. It can be hard though, as some photos may have impact to me, but not anyone else.

In 2011, on a trip to San Francisco, my mom brought her Canon Rebel XTI. I had interest in using it, and I photographed everything that trip!

Pet photography is my favorite, by far. Animals and nature just go so well together. It’s incredible to be able to capture amazing moments of our beloved animals that don’t live nearly long enough.

My go-to camera set up is my Canon R6 mark II, with my 70-200mm 2.8 lens. The camera works best for my projects because it has the animal eye detection, which is super helpful for animal photography. The 70-200mm gives me that nice background/subject separation and really dials in on the animal subjects.

I’d want them to feel emotion, especially compassion and love. I try to capture each pet showing their personality as best as I can. I want people to be able to feel each pet’s personality through the photo.

For my award-winning shot, the toughest part was making sure I got the perfect moment where the dog was in full momentum jumping into the water. An honorable mention was being in the water, chest deep, keeping my camera from falling in!

My dog has been my biggest influence. Because of her, I realized just how important it is to have beautiful photos of our pets before they leave this world.

Just enter the awards! You learn so much from simply entering. If you think you have a strong photo, submit it! Worst case, you learn something from it.

Don’t be too hard on yourself, and don’t compare yourself to others.

Editing plays a huge role in my photos. I have a fine-art style, so I take a lot of time perfecting that. Editing is where my creativity really shines through.

In my opinion, AI can be useful, but also very bad. It is nice to use to remove tough distractions in my photos that I just can’t get down manually. But, to create a whole image that someone can’t differentiate from real or fake, is quite scary for my job in the future, as photography is what I do full time.

I  would love to photograph wild horses someday. I know this is probably pretty attainable, but it is still a big dream of mine!