Well I'll be - at left, see the cover of the just-published special issue of Popular Dogs magazine, which centers on Bulldogs. That's Munch on the cover, a pet photograph I made a few months back when with the pup's owner Deirdre and some other fine folks from the Long Island Bulldog Rescue group in St. James on Long Island. Dog photography was never so easy and fun as with this group, and the hits kept on comin' as one dog after another posed for the photos.

Munch received a double-whammy of good news this week; in addition to scoring the cover of the magazine, he was accepted to show at Westminster next month. Keep an eye out for him in the ring on Feb. 11. Good luck, Munch!

Here's another pet photograph we made here in Port Washington of Lucy Liu (no relation, best of my knowledge, to the film actor), a blue pug. Lucy Liu is donning a bridal gown, hot off the sewing machine, as designed by the utmost of cool Deni Alexander of Deni Alexander Designs. The photo will be used for a Bitch New York advertisement in Modern Dog magazine, so keep your eyes peeled for their Spring Issue.

Special thanks to Deni, who was a lot of fun to work with. Deni "gets it," if you know what I mean. . .so we had a lot of fun with the dry sarcasm and Ren & Stimpy references during the shoot. I'll have to get her together with pal Cherie at Ripe Art Gallery, as I'm pretty sure they're doppelgangers; can't wait to see what happens from a quantum physics standpoint when they try to occupy the same space at the same time.

Last but by no means least, here's a photograph from a family portrait session we did here on Long Island with Port Washington local Shari, her husband, and two great kids. The weather was warm enough for us to hit the beach for a few minutes in the fading light, which let us capture some wonderful, evenly-lit photograhs of them all.

I met Shari a few weeks back at her birthday party, which I also photographed, and in the process had a wonderful time meeting her friends and family. Speaking of, she needs to see the rest of her proofs from this shoot, so I have to sign off and get to work...

One quick note on the status of the photography industry and its relation to Copyright law:

Photographs, like any artwork, are protected by U.S. and International Copyright law the moment they're created. Diligent photographers send in their work to the Copyright office in Washington DC about once a month, myself included - and often, I'll also watermark them visibly as Copyrighted. Regardless, the metadata - the information embedded in the digital file - is also always there.

But, that doesn't always stop folks from swiping photo from the Internet, especially blogs like this one. And sometimes, the images will even be used commercially. So figure that - someone downloads a photograph without permission, then uses it to help bring in more business for their own profit. Not good. Not fair, either. Also, not legal. If you're bored, read the story in the Washington Post about some real horror stories, in a piece titled "Hey, Isn't that...."