“Can you edit out a leash? There’s no way I’m letting my dog off-leash.”

People ask some version of this before booking more often than you might guess, and the answer has two parts.

Yes. And good, because I wasn’t going to ask you to take it off.

I photographed Stella at Pima Animal Care Center in April 2016. In the original frame, a red slip lead runs up behind her head and exits through the top of the picture. In the finished portrait, it’s gone. So are the eye boogers, since a shelter dog doesn’t get a face wipe an hour before her session the way yours can.

Everything else stays: the one flopped ear, the crooked grin, and the expression that got her noticed by an adopter.

I edit out distractions. I don’t edit dogs.

That edit has been part of my workflow for so long that I had to check the file dates to remember Stella’s session was more than ten years ago. Somewhere along the way, it stopped registering as something I do, the same way you stop noticing a step in a recipe you’ve cooked a hundred times.

The leash isn’t optional anyway

Tucson requires dogs to be leashed whenever they’re off your property, and a six-foot leash standard applies. Every park session I photograph therefore has dogs on leash, held, or contained some other way.

That isn’t my policy. It’s the county’s, and I carry poop bags in my camera bag for the same reason.

My contract says it too: “All animals are expected to be leashed or fenced in for outdoor sessions.”

I’ve photographed shelter animals at Pima Animal Care Center since 2013. Their Animal Protection Officers enforce these ordinances, and I’m not going to undermine colleagues I’ve worked alongside for more than a decade by ignoring the rules they spend their days upholding.

The leash requirement relaxes inside designated dog parks, but I don’t photograph in those. Gravel and chain link don’t make much of a backdrop, but the larger problem is that a dog park is full of dogs I don’t know. I can’t track all of them while my attention is on yours.

Sometimes I’m the one who asks for the leash

Removing a leash is a routine edit when we set it up correctly, and that setup happens before I press the shutter, not afterward.

I photographed Basil at PACC in September 2023. He was young, friendly, and had opinions about sitting still, so a handler held his lead taut, straight up, and out of frame, with no slack curling against his brindle coat.

I direct exactly how the leash is held because the hold determines whether the edit takes two minutes or an hour. Held correctly, the finished portrait looks as though the dog was photographed without a leash at all. As far as anyone looking at Basil’s picture can tell, he was.

I’ve started sessions this way with squirrely dogs for years. A leash held in the right position lets us bank a handful of solid images in the first few minutes, before the dog decides the backdrop is optional. Once he settles, we may not need it anymore.

If he doesn’t settle, we already have the portrait.

You may also notice what stayed in Basil’s finished image: his collar.

Should my dog wear a collar?

That’s the follow-up question, and my answer is the same one I gave in June about grooming.

The portrait should show who your dog is on an ordinary day. If she wanders around the house nekkid, photograph her nekkid. If he has worn a collar every day of his life, the collar belongs in the portrait because a bare neck may look as strange to you as a stranger’s dog hanging on your wall.

And if he owns a fancy collar for special occasions, well, what are you waiting for? Go get it.

Mine are nudists at heart but they are not above wearing a sparkly collar from time to time too.

What you’re actually asking

Underneath “Can you edit out a leash?” there’s usually a different question: Will you make my dog do something he can’t safely do?

I won’t. That's a promise.

A calm, connected portrait depends on your dog feeling secure, and for many dogs, the leash is part of that security. It stays on during the session and comes out in the edit.

The dog on your wall is still the dog on your couch.

If you’re thinking about a session, head to my contact page and schedule a complimentary consultation. We’ll plan around your dog, leash and all.