We have all heard the expression, "a picture is worth a thousand words", but why? Is it the details? The tone, mood, subtleties, or even the expressions? To me, a picture is worth a thousand words because of the way we feel when we see it. There are one thousand directions our emotions take us when we see something frozen in time and space, and we are often losing the battle to find adequate verbage. 

While this is how we experience viewing images, I am similary lost for words when I'm capturing the content filling my frame because of the many ways that I feel. My main goal in a time frame of photographing an animal is to experience who that animal is and catch snippets of my understanding based on our interaction. These freeze frames are often only a slight percentage of our inretraction together, so you can imagine that for an animal nerd like myself, I'm left with a beautifully fond memory and a few shots to express my fondness. 

When I'm photographing, I'm fully focused on what I feel the environment telling me and how I sense the animal in that environment responding. Many times this expression is playful, many times quizzical, also calmness and gentleness are often present. Whatever I sense is what I try to capture. This is why I don't pose animals in a position that they didn't voluntarily go into, because I want to catch who that animal is in that environment for that interaction period. 

When the animals I'm photographing are curious, I often can't tell if they are more curious or if I am. Curious to get the light spilling in from that angle, curious to catch that expression, curious what happens if I move two inches over or don't look through the viewfinder for that shot. 

I'm grateful to have the ability and passion to capture animals' personalities like I do. When my clients tell me, "that's exactly how I see their character expressed everyday!" It makes me smile, because somehow I see what they see, and it's never forced.