Photographer Captures Newborn Puppies in Their First 3 Weeks of Life
by Laura Cross
Published on June 27, 2013
Photographing newborn puppies is tough work. No, really, it is.
Traer Scott, photographer and author of the book Newborn Puppies: Dogs in Their First Three Weeks (Chronicle Books, $18.95), found that there are quite a few challenges to getting shots of newborn puppies.
First of all, they’re hard to find. There are plenty of adult dogs to choose from, but puppies who are less than 3 weeks old? Not so much.
To track down enough pups, Scott reached out to her friends in the rescue community and searched Craigslist for breeders with new litters of puppies. The rescues and breeders she reached out to usually led her to more people who had puppies, and through word-of-mouth, she was able to obtain plenty of newborn puppies for her book.
Another challenge? Her adorable little subjects didn’t move very much. “You can put them in a puppy pile and they wiggle around, but that’s all they can really do,” Scott says.
To capture the immobile pups, Scott had to get creative and find new ways to photograph them. “I had to approach the project like I was photographing a newborn human being, since just like puppies, human babies also don’t move,” she says.
Want to see how all of Scott’s hard work paid off? Check out our photo gallery of some of the puppies you can find featured in the book. From a 2-day-old Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier–Poodle mix who is so tiny he could fit in the palm of your hand to a family of 3-week-old Goldendoodles snuggling with Mom, these puppies will warm your heart and make you appreciate just how much a dog grows and develops over the course of his life.
See more book photo galleries from Vetstreet:
Photographer’s New Book Takes an Unexpected Look at Kittens