My Why, Charlotte Ann
Meet Charlotte Ann, my gift
My Charlotte story begins like this: I was at the National Championship AirRaces in Reno in September of 2016 and learned about adorable little 8 year old Cavalier named Charlotte who needed a new place to live. The first photo I saw of her is tattooed in my memory, she was flopped on her back looking directly at the camera waiting for bellyrubs. I was smitten immediately. Lucky me, I got to provide her a new home. I travelled from Reno to Phoenix to pick her up, flew from Phoenix to Dallas with this little stranger accompanying me. She met my 12 yr old dog Toby and our story continued through the next 6 years: through Toby's passing in December 2017, to me bringing home a puppy (Whiskey, back to the 2 dog household status), next to bringing home another puppy (Griffon, we're up to 3 dog household if you're keeping score), and finally a call from a trusted friend who said "I have a 4 year old tricolor male with a heart murmur who needs a home-his name is Diego, but I know you want a tricolor to name Dash-he could be your Dash." All of the sudden I had 4 Cavaliers! One in every color! Lifetime goal achieved!! After Covid upended all our lives we moved from Texas back to Arizona in 2021. I realized Charlotte was slowing down, her time was coming to an end. I also knew I wanted more than just cellphone camera photos of her. I decided to tackle digital photography with a REAL camera to capture more memories of my dear sweet girl. See, once upon another time, I was a young human person studying Photography in college. I was more of a view camera, black and white, polaroid type 55 kind of girl. Photoshop was only a couple of years old at this point and I dismissed digital because well I was an art school nerd who was using non-silver printing techniques. Let's return focus to the real story; Back to early 2022, I had loads of digital images of my Charlotte (and my first 2 Cavaliers as well) but none of them high enough quality to print big. I made an investment into a professional digital camera as well as a majority of time trying to master this computer dressed as a camera. So why do I want to make pet portraits? Because our memory gets foggy (my memories are foggy) but now I have some really beautiful meaningful images of my dear sweet Charlotte. From September 20 2016 to August 23 2022 I was so very fortunate to be Charlottes human. When I miss her (which is frequently) I can look at these images and feel the connection that made me "her person." Dogs are ephemeral gifts, we are lucky to live with them. I was fortunate to know Charlotte from age 8 in 2016 to a couple weeks shy of what would have been her 14th birthday in 2022. Every day with her was a gift.
