TEN for TEN – 7. Rafferty the lurcher

2019 was a landmark year for me, ten years since I began my journey as a professional dog photographer.  To celebrate I invited ten of the dogs I’d photographed over the years back for another photo shoot and shared the series of pictures on social media: Ten for Ten. 

Rafferty was one of the most stunning creatures I’ve ever photographed. My photoshoot with him was also one of my very first photoshoots as a professional photographer and such a lovely one. I was very excited about the shoot, my first time photographing a scruffy lurcher, and as I was about to discover that day, it’s almost impossible to take a bad photograph of a scruffy lurcher, they are God’s gift to dog photographers…  

You know how it is sometimes, when you take a photograph, sneak a peep at the back of the camera when you think no-one’s looking (because that’s so unprofessional, right?!) and the image literally takes your breath away? That’s what happened at that shoot all those years ago, and that photograph of Rafferty in particular helped define my style and my brand.  It’s probably still tucked away on my website, somewhere…  

Well here is Rafferty again, eight years after that first shoot. Extraordinarily, he hasn’t aged one little bit.  I mean, we always say that of people and of dogs but in Rafferty’s case it is exactly true.  Yet another reason to add a scruffy lurcher to the list of dogs I hope I’ll own one day…

You can read all about the Ten for Ten project and the stories behind the dogs I asked to take part here. Every one of them was a special part of my journey over the years and I hope you enjoy hearing the stories why.