Karen Moe Vancouver Portrait Photography: A Year in the Life of Karen Moe Photography Part 1

Hi!
Well, I did it! I finished my second Year in the Life book today and it has been sent off to the printers. Some of my wonderful clients are buying one and it will be a gorgeous Dog (& Cat) Art coffee table book. Here is the first installment for your enjoyment :)

“Whirl-O-Rama-Kismet”

We start 2012 off with Kismet. At the time of this shoot, he was about the same age as Karen Moe Photography,a mere 8 months.

The shoot took place in Langley BC, on a bright, windy, and wild spring day. And Kismet was as wily as the wind that blew and whirled him around the acreage, his round puppy body and Havanese red and white a blur in the spring green. I was the running photographer. Chasing and ducking and attempting to predict his next move, spinning between exposures as he raced between sun and shade, still and speed, the photographer’s adrenalin buzzed alongside her subject. What resulted were a series of shots with his hair whipping around his body like a tornado, the blustering spring day in harmony with his untouched puppy spirit.

Kismet has now become a bit of a celebrity. As an ideal specimen of Havanese, he has been whisked away to the show dog circuit. His Kismet days are a thing of the past. He now jet sets from show to show and was even in Westminster in February 2013. Ironically, the history of his name is indicative of his rapid rise to fame. Starting off as Kismet, soon after this picture was taken, he went back to his breeder, Beth Obrecht of “Rockhurst Havanese” in Wakefield, Quebec, and became ‘Toto’; after a brief time as Toto, he was sent down to a prestigious handler in Sedona, California and was aptly named ‘Sedona’ because of the red Sedona desert and his corresponding red hair.

This narrative of a name doesn’t end here. I saw ‘Kismet’ again at the BC Dog Fancier’s show in October 2012 and couldn’t decide what to call him, so I tried out ‘Kismet-Toto-Sedona’. As I photographed his impeccably groomed, swishy perfection trotting around the ring, though, he then became ‘His Royal Highness’ (HRH for short). But, after the Westminster Dog Show, and returning to a less glamorous but maybe more fun life as a sought-after-stud, he has now become ‘Jack.’ Personally, after such a lineage of nomenclature, I find ‘Jack’ to be a bit of a thud. But perhaps his new found macho profession is befitting of a simpler, more manly name.

Nevertheless, whatever ‘Kismet-Toto-Sedona-HRH-Jack’s’ name is in the moment, I am so glad I met and photographed a most charismatic and mischievous puppy named Kismet!