People love spending time and money to get the perfect, studio-quality picture of their skin children, but what about those of us who want the same treatment for our fur ones?
Look no further than Twodogs—a new pet photography studio in Dartmouth—started by Ryan Sheppard and Stephanie Newell with that exact vision in mind.
The goal of each shoot is to capture the expressions and individuality of each pet. For Sheppard and Newell, it’s all about creating show-stopping pieces of art that showcase each animal’s true personality, whether they’re a sassy diva or playful clown.
It all started, of course, with taking pictures of their own dogs—Ellie and Milo. “We are obsessed with our pets, and we did a Halloween shoot a few years ago where us and the dogs dressed up in costumes and we set up a background in our house and took pictures of that,” says Sheppard. “And now we have a massive print of it in our living room, and it’s the number one thing people comment on when they come into our home.”
Both Newell and Sheppard work in photography, but also have backgrounds in marketing and branding, and stumbled upon the idea for Twodogs like most great entrepreneurs—by combining their true passion with a gap in the marketplace.
“We looked around the area and realized nobody is really doing studio portraits of pets with bright, bold esthetics and we thought, it seems like a really good opportunity because we get to do what we love and we get to pet all the animals,” says Newell.
Right now, the business is serving as a side hustle—which they operate out of their garage-turned-studio in Portland Estates—but the goal is to make the side hustle their full-time gig in the long-term.
The couple created Twodogs with the understanding that for a whole subset of society, their pets are their children and not every family looks exactly the same; pet parents want the same high-end photography for their babies—and that’s certainly what they deliver.
“It’s not just a picture of your pet that you can use as your phone wallpaper, the aesthetic and the way that it’s shot makes for really cool artwork,” says Newell.
To prove their skills, they offered to take on “the most challenging” test of their careers to date: my three cats Marley, Frank and Monty.
“This is going to be a lot of fun because we don’t get to photograph a lot of cats,” says Sheppard, while Newell adds, “cats famously don’t travel well so this will be a challenge for us and something that will help us develop our skills—like our patience! But every shoot we do has a fair amount of wrangling.”
Without further ado…three cats. One photo. This is how it went.
Book your pet’s photoshoot with Twodogs studio here.
This article appears in Dec 1-18, 2024.
