Pawtraits by mjc photography, 56 Cornwall Street, Plymouth (2026)

23/03/2026

One of the more pressing reasons I have recently taken up a residency at is the simple, blissful reliability of a roof. It turns out that having a sturdy layer of industrial grade material between oneself and the heavens is a marvellous invention.
Mother Nature, it seems, took our collective grumbling about last summer’s hosepipe bans quite personally. In a fit of celestial overcompensation, she has spent the last few months ensuring we have enough precipitation to see us through to the next decade, and perhaps a small portion of the one after that.
Having been the grateful recipient of a gift voucher, available, I should shamelessly add, from our stall in the (a chap has to eat, after all) I finally found a window of meteorological cooperation. It was a rare and fleeting opportunity to capture some photographs that didn’t involve me looking like a saturated North Sea fisherman in heavy duty Gore-Tex.
I decamped to Radford Park, a place of terrific, if slightly damp, variety. It boasts everything a photographer could desire: charmingly tumbledown stone buildings, an abundance of flora and fauna, and even a miniature castle that looks as though it were misplaced by a passing medieval giant.
In my mind’s eye, that dangerous place where logic rarely ventures,I envisioned elegant portraits of Luna set against vast, sweeping panoramic vistas. The reality, however, was somewhat more kinetic. Luna, evidently impressed by the terrain, decided the best way to appreciate the park was to traverse every square inch of it at breakneck speed.
It is a scene that has become distressingly familiar to the locals: a middle-aged man, increasingly red of face, prostrate in the mud with a camera clutched in his hand, emitting a series of desperate barks and whistles. All of this in the vain hope of arresting the subject’s attention for the fraction of a second required for a "formal" pose.
It is a specialized form of madness, I grant you. But oh, the elation when that frantic, muddy chaos aligns for one fleeting moment and becomes, quite simply, "The Shot."
If you have a four legged friend who similarly treats the laws of physics as mere suggestions, I would love to meet them. Whether they prefer a dignified stroll or, like Luna, a series of frantic, midair acrobatics, we can capture a moment that actually lasts longer than a whistle.
https://www.mjc-photography.com/store/pet-photoshoot

23/02/2026

🚀 THE STUDIO DOORS ARE OPENING! 🚀
Big news! I am thrilled to announce that Mjc-photography.com is officially taking a residency in a professional studio space starting March 1st! 📸✨

🤩Just some of the things we can offer are:

👱‍♀️Headshots for aspiring actors

👫Families looking to capture a moment in time

🐩 Pet owners who know their fur-baby is a superstar.

✨I’ve got the lights ready for you.

To celebrate our new venture, I’m offering a "Grand Opening" Special: 🎁 10% off for the first 10 bookings in March!

Don't wait, slots are limited as I balance my time between the lens and the lab.
Let’s make some magic happen in the new space!

👇 Book your session now at the link in my bio! Or message me your questions.

24/11/2025

Quinn, was a curious, almost unsettling anomaly. He was; to use a phrase I never expected to apply to a small dog, akin to a Buddhist monk who had taken a particularly solemn vow of Noble Silence. It was as if his owner had located the master Mute button on the dog's operating system, pressed it with surgical precision, and then, just to be safe, gone and hidden the remote under a rather large rock. The quiet was disconcerting.

Arriving on location, some popular, grassy receptacle for dog walkers, we had certainly beaten the rush, though to say we were "alone" would be stretching the truth until it snapped like an old rubber band. The K9 loving population, as I have observed countless times, are a committed, indeed fanatical, bunch who apparently operate under the deeply concerning motto: Sleep is for the Weak.

Now, when you spend a sufficient amount of time snapping pictures of our four legged friends, you soon find that the process involves a series of ritualistic humiliations. It becomes depressingly normal to find yourself lying prostrate in something vaguely resembling mud, whilst making all manner of grotesque, high pitched noises, a sort of bizarre, middle aged mating call, all in the earnest pursuit of "getting the shot."

So it was, that in the middle of this perfectly routine spectacle, I experienced something of a first class shock. A kind hearted soul, mistaking my utterly deliberate photographic manoeuvre for a catastrophic physical failure, rushed over with an expression of profound alarm. They were desperately trying to help this middle aged fool; (me) back onto his feet, convinced I had somehow taken a tumble and was perhaps moments away from needing serious medical intervention. My clients, naturally, enjoyed a delightful bit of unexpected spectator sport.

Having been suitably reassured that I was indeed physically fine, though almost certainly mentally unstable, a condition I managed to omit from the diagnosis, my Samaritan retreated to a safer, more sensible distance. Through this whole, embarrassing debacle, Quinn, the little Buddha himself, remained an utter professional, maintaining a sort of inner Zen that would have made the Dalai Lama weep with pride.

So, here is a helpful public service announcement for all you early risers: the next time you spot a gent of advancing years lying face down in a suspiciously damp patch of grass, do have a good look for an expensive looking camera nearby. If you spot one, there is a very good chance that he did it on purpose and that he is merely sacrificing his dignity to the cruel gods of light and aperture. Do not, I implore you, try to save him. It’s a job requirement. They really don't pay us enough!

21/10/2025

Really pleased with this framed print from our recent photoshoot.

14/10/2025

This particular Buddy, you see, is one of those creatures who takes the received wisdom about having a 'pal' in life and makes it his entire raison d'être. Not just for companionship, mind you, but because he views the entire human race as a vast, untapped workforce dedicated to one, singular, utterly vital task: playing fetch.

For Buddy, the moment a rubber ball arcs against the sky, preferably the particularly offensively pink sort, it's not a leisure activity. It's not a game. It is a vocation. A calling. A solemn, lifelong obligation to ensure that said ball is returned to the original launching pad with the speed and single-minded focus of a highly specialized ballistic missile.

Now, as a professional, I had to get my portraits. Buddy, thankfully, was surprisingly cooperative during the initial phase. He fixed his gaze on that dreadful pink orb with the laser like intensity of a Cold War general examining maps, a good pose was never in doubt, just so long as one didn't, you know, drop the ball so to speak (and believe me, the pressure not to utter such a cliché was almost as intense as his stare). We rattled through the headshots in record time, largely because he understood that every click of the camera was merely a brief, irritating preamble to the main event: more fetch.

Then came the action shots. I had a quick chat with his 'mum' about the trajectory, got what I thought was a sensible estimate of the maximum range of her throwing arm, and settled down on the ground. A nice, low angle, ready to capture the dynamism.

What followed, I can only describe as a fundamental failure in my understanding of basic physics, human strength, and the sheer, unadulterated velocity achievable by a dog consumed by duty. My estimation of distance, it turns out, was shall we say, wildly misguided. I'd barely managed to frame the scene when I was informed of my spatial incompetence by a bright pink blur whistling about an inch over my head, instantly followed by the furry, four-legged embodiment of the aforementioned vocation.

One moment I was basking in the delight of securing truly superb action shots (if I do say so myself), and the next, a tidal wave of panic was washing over me. The ground started to thrum, a veritable thunder of paws. as this canine rocket, utterly blind to all obstacles, threatened to conquer every single piece of photographic equipment (and soft human flesh) that stood in his glorious path.

It was, objectively speaking, a near miss. A hair's breadth from total professional disaster. But boy oh boy, were those action shots worth it. The intensity, the blur, the absolute commitment... it was magnificent. Just needed to remember to check my life insurance policy later.

10/10/2025

Now, as a man who owns what I shall charitably call a small dog with no discernible volume control, a creature whose primary mission in life seems to be to test the structural integrity of my eardrums, it was a truly humbling experience. I mean, here I was, used to the crescendo of a canine tantrum over a dropped crumb, and then I met these four working Labradors.

They were magnificent. Sleek, focused, and possessed of a quiet dignity that suggested they'd all made head boy at whatever exclusive academy turns out these sorts of dogs (if Eton had a K9 department, these four would be polishing their prefect badges).

The thing about this line of work is that you never truly know what you're going to get when you point a camera at an animal. It can be a chaotic, tail-chasing palaver. But these dogs? Pros. The moment they delivered a polite, professional sniff of greeting, you just knew it was going to be a walk in the park, a very well-behaved, orderly, and beautifully illuminated park.

However, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, could have prepared us for the frankly irresponsible cuteness of Digby.

Still very much a puppy, this pint-sized, bouncing ball of fluff was so ridiculously adorable he made a rainbow look like a tax form. He was sweeter than a candyfloss machine that’s gone rogue in a sugar factory, and within seconds, he’d mugged us all for our hearts.

The whole gang was here to show off their skills, and we quickly established that the idea of constraining these majestic creatures with something as tedious and dull as a lead was frankly an insult to their professional sensibilities. Leads are for dogs who attempt to debate the mailman. These dogs were here to retrieve, to perform, and to put on a show. And by Jupiter, a show they put on.

😍 🐶

06/10/2025

Love this!😍 Thank you so much London Camera Exchange Plymouth the prints look fab. 🤩

29/09/2025

It was about a month back that Eddie's mum, bless her cotton socks, decided to commission me for a portrait of her lad, the resulting masterpiece (if I may be permitted a modest cough of self-praise) intended as a rather spiffing gift.
Now, the pre session correspondence was, as is often the case, a minefield of vital domestic intelligence. Crucially, I learned two things: first, that I was to leave my Stetson at home, a sensible precaution, no doubt, given the general skittishness of the modern subject; and second, that Eddie was, to put it mildly, the Michael Phelps of the dog kingdom. That is to say, a creature possessed of an unwavering, almost pathological, need to hurl himself into any body of water, regardless of temperature or depth, at the earliest possible opportunity.
With this aquatic propensity hanging over us like a meteorological inevitability, we agreed upon a riverbank rendezvous. The plan, a masterpiece of optimistic delusion, was to nab a few stately portraits on dry land before the Tom Daley-esque plunge into the wet stuff commenced.
Ah, but life, as I've learned from years of observing its relentless tendency toward the inconvenient, rarely respects a carefully laid plan. It transpired that hats weren't the only thing our canine hero wasn't keen on. Apparently, the sight of a middle-aged chap, hair thinning, trousers slightly too tight, wielding a large, black, expensive looking camera also gave him, to use the modern and thoroughly peculiar parlance, "the ick."
The stately portrait session thus quickly devolved into a frantic, game of Whac-A-Mole, with me desperately pointing the lens at whichever clump of bracken or patch of shrubbery his little black and white face happened to pop out of next.
A strategic retreat was clearly in order. We wisely agreed that chasing a ball or a stick, especially if it involved a good deal of splashing, might prove a more fruitful endeavour.
So it was that I found myself, knees crackling like an ancient bonfire in protest, crouched low on the muddy riverbank. A stick, the holy grail of all dogdom, was launched in my general direction, swiftly followed by a torpedo of black and white fur and a splash that could have drowned a small village. I think it’s fair to say our furry water-baby was finally, gloriously, in his element.
Several minutes, and hundreds of clicks of the shutter later, we had a very happy, dripping dog, and, praise be, a truly glorious set of images. It just goes to show you, sometimes the greatest photographic success comes not from high art, but from embracing the glorious, muddy chaos of a dog doing what he loves. And not wearing a hat.

07/07/2025

It was one of those mornings when the sun seemed to have taken a personal affront to the very concept of moderation, determined to fry me into a crisp, human-shaped fritter. My internal thermostat, never terribly reliable at the best of times, was already sputtering, threatening to turn me into something resembling a well-boiled lobster. Mercifully, a mutual agreement was struck with River's human companion: an ungodly early rendezvous, primarily to sn**ch what little decent light might be lurking about, and secondarily to prevent me from keeling over mid-shutter-click, an unedifying prospect for all concerned.

Now, River, a fine, strapping black Labrador, was indeed aptly named. "River" he was, and rivers, it turned out, were his passion, his very raison d'être. One might even say he was a connoisseur of currents, a savant of streams. A slight wrinkle in the grand plan, however, was River's particular medical issue, rendering camera flash a distinct no-no. This, naturally, elevated the pursuit of pristine natural light from a mere preference to an absolute, non-negotiable imperative.

My usual modus operandi with water-loving canines involves a preemptive land-based portrait session, a futile attempt to capture some semblance of dry dignity before the inevitable transformation into a soggy, four-legged mop. But despite the intoxicating gurgle and murmur of the nearby flowing water, River, bless his cotton socks, indulged us. He sat, he stayed, he even managed a few soulful gazes amidst the verdant ferns, all while the siren song of the river no doubt echoed in his very soul. Ten minutes, in human time, is but a blink; in dog-time, it's an eternity, a veritable eon of dutiful posing. River, however, bore it with the stoicism of a seasoned professional.

Then, inevitably, it was time for the main event. My own peculiar affliction, you see, dictates that I must, must, peer through the viewfinder. The fancy LCD screen, with all its modern conveniences, might as well be a blank piece of slate for all the use I get out of it. This rather antiquated foible means that, to achieve the desired aquatic masterpiece, I frequently find myself prostrate in the shallows, camera clutched precariously, as a jubilant, water-obsessed Black Lab, propelled by some unseen canine jet engine, hurtles directly towards me. The resulting geyser of spray and general aquatic chaos is, frankly, breathtaking.

Emerging from the embrace of the river, tastefully adorned with a liberal sprinkling of water, sand, and the occasional errant shell, it was genuinely difficult to ascertain who had derived more unadulterated joy from the exercise. Given the inevitable post-adventure car-cleaning ritual that awaited me, I daresay River ultimately emerged as the undisputed victor in the 'fun stakes'. But oh, what a glorious, messy, utterly Bryson-esque victory it was.

06/07/2025

Well, blow me down, if the weather gods weren't playing a bit of a cruel joke that week. We'd been swanning about, absolutely basking in what could only be described as truly glorious sunshine, the kind that makes you forget what misery feels like. So, naturally, we packed our bags, filled our flasks, and headed for Dartmoor first thing Sunday morning, visions of sun-drenched rambles dancing in our heads. And what did we get? A radical, utterly impudent change of heart from the heavens. The sort of damp, dispiriting grey that makes you want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over your head. We squelched our way back to the car, defeated and thoroughly soggy, unanimously agreeing that a do-over was in order.

And so, Sunday, bless its reliable heart, rolled around once more. This time, things were looking decidedly up. Our star of the show, a distinguished model named Pip, was practically vibrating with anticipation. You see, she'd endured the particular indignity of being unceremoniously hauled out of the car the previous weekend, only to be dragged back in five minutes later, still sniffing the moorland air with a hopeful nostril.

Now, Pip, being of a certain vintage, took it all in her stride. She posed on demand, radiated a serene contentment, and generally seemed to be having the time of her life. And I, clearly lulled into a dangerous sense of complacency by this relaxed session, was about to be rudely awakened. Because Pip, as it turned out, had a considerably younger sister, a boisterous little number by the name of Purdy. And Purdy, it quickly became apparent, was rather less enamoured with the prospect of having a camera lens pointed squarely in her direction. An objection, I might add, that she voiced with all the enthusiastic indignation of a startled badger whenever I dared lift the camera. But necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. A strategic retreat, a flick of the camera to silent mode, and the deployment of a longer lens meant Purdy could enjoy her walk, blissfully unburdened by the photographic gaze, and we, in turn, snagged some truly splendid, natural-looking images. Proof, if ever it were needed, that even the most obstreperous subjects can be won over with a bit of cunning and a longer lens.

Pawtraits by mjc photography

23/03/2026

23/02/2026

24/11/2025

21/10/2025

14/10/2025

10/10/2025

06/10/2025

29/09/2025

07/07/2025

06/07/2025

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