This is my second year as a volunteer photographer at the Humane Society of Northwest Montana shelter. It all began on August 7th, 2022, when we visited the shelter to look for a cat. We ended up coming home with a very special furry friend, who we named Zuk. Zuk continues to ensure we stay physically fit by making us climb trees to bring him down (so far, it's been three times
).As a photographer, I know how frequently shelter pets are overlooked because of the quality of their pictures. Pets at shelters are often very stressed, making it difficult to capture their true personalities in photographs. It takes true passion and patience to take a picture that showcases a pet's unique character and charm. Understanding this, I offered my help and, starting in January, began taking pictures at the shelter on a weekly basis.I visit the shelter every Wednesday. I call it "Christmas Wednesday" because each time the door to the room where I wait with my camera begins to open with a new pet entering, I feel a build-up of excitement like a kid unwrapping a present, eager to see what's inside. I cannot tell you how much fun I have.With the help of very dedicated staff, we have had so many amazing sessions – outside, inside, dressed-up... you name it. I truly believe that these sessions have significantly helped and continue to help our furry friends find their new loving homes.
This year, to help the Humane Society mitigate repair costs after freezing temperatures in early January caused significant damage to its Charlotte Edkins Animal Adoption Center, I decided to organize the first calendar contest for 2025. I got this idea from listening to one of the Hair of the Dog podcasts and immediately jumped on it. Initially, organizing all the details seemed overwhelming. However, after following the amazing guidance from Golden Bark Photography, it started to look doable, and on March 1st, the contest was launched on the Gogophotocontest.com page.The contest was a huge success—it ran for six weeks, had 59 entries, 179 participants, 6,980 votes, and raised over $6K for the Humane Society! We had so many adorable participants! I can't tell you how much I enjoyed looking at the pictures and reading the stories of each participant! Every morning, before checking anything else, I would jump on the contest statistics page to see if there were any changes.
Oh boy, it was an exciting time! I wish everyone could have won, but rules are rules, and we had the top 13 winners who won their professional photo sessions and a place to be featured in the calendar.But the real winner was me :-) I had such a pleasure photographing 13 amazing and very different furry friends. Every session was truly a gift to my heart but one of these sessions left special paw prints on my heart. For this particular session, I had to photograph a beautiful dog with her two humans, her dog friend, and two bunny friends. It was such fun chaos, where we all laughed to tears. We captured so many moments and created beautiful memories. A couple of weeks later, I found out that one of the sweet bunnies had passed away. While I felt so sad to hear the news, it warmed my heart to know that we had the chance to capture those priceless happy memories that will be treasured forever.
After such tremendous success, I decided to make it an annual event. So stay tuned for the second annual Pet Calendar Contest in 2026!