🎙️Podcast: Helping Dogs Look Their Best with Winnie Au of Cone of Shame

Episode #11: Helping Dogs Look Their Best with Winnie Au of Cone of Shame

Do you love taking photos of your pup? So does Winnie Au.

Winnie is a professional photographer who lives in Brooklyn where she spends her time photographing people, animals, food, and the spaces where all of these things live.

This week, she’s publishing a book called Cone of Shame, featuring over 125 color photographs of dogs wearing one-of-a-kind cones, which started as a photography series to help raise awareness for rescue dogs with urgent medical needs.

Today Winnie’s here to share what she loves about welcoming a variety of dogs into her photography studio. We also chat about:

• How Winnie got started with dog photography
• The inspiration behind Winnie’s “cone of shame” concept
• What Winnie loves about capturing the individuality of each dog she photographs
• The biggest differences between photographing dogs vs other subjects
• How you can take more unique photos of your pups (just for fun!)

Tune in for a peek behind the curtain of an amazing dog photographer. Then join the Juniper Community to meet more pet parents like you!

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Stream The Podcast Here:

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Highlights from the episode:

• 5:48 — Societal changes — There's been this big wave of turning our dogs into our babies and just the way that they become a much bigger part of the family. And even just, you know, when I grew up, our family dog lived outside. And I think as an adult, having a dog that lived in my house with me and, like, shares our bed, like, all of that stuff is just a big change. So I saw it as kind of a societal change and something that I wanted to document.
• 10:49 — Supporting dogs with medical needs — It kind of broke my heart to think about someone having to figure out, like, oh, do we treat our dog, or do we have to put them to sleep? Like, nobody wants to sit around making that decision. It's awful. So it shouldn't be made based on finances, at least. So this [book] was sort of a way to give back and again, like, make my pain turn into something a little bit more hopeful and better.
• 14:47 — Capturing abstract moments — And in capturing the dogs, we do get a mix of their personality to come through. But also I loved capturing these moments that were more abstract. So we had, for example, a chinese crested dog who, when her cone was on, it was made out of these, like, thin foam strips, and she literally was really light on her feet, so she dances in circles. And so the resulting images are almost like watching a ballerina.
• 20:21 — Best part of working with dogs — I think the best part about working with dogs is, like, not only do they make me happy, but they make everyone in the room happy.
• 30:43 — Dream goals — I want to create work that I care about and that I would make even if the planet was empty, which I hope it won't be. But, like, you kind of have to think that way, which is like, what would you be doing if we were sitting in the middle of the forest and nobody was around?

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