Capturing the joy of picture-perfect pets Diesel ... Pet portraits, Shannon Plummer/wetnosefotos.com Source: The Daily Telegraph Sheldon ... PET owners are paying thousands of dollars for professional photographers to immortalise their beloved animals on canvas or in fine art printed photos. Pampered pooches account for an estimated 95 per cent of professional pet photo shoots but proud owners of almost anything that can crawl, slither or fly are lining up to have their pets parade their stuff in front of a camera. What began with a few photographers across Australia has ballooned into dozens of studios in every capital city catering to pet owners - a profitable sideline to the usual weddings, family portraits and commercial shoots. Pets are family. I don't see it as being any different to having portraits of your kids taken," Ruthless Photos owner Ruth O'Leary said. It's probably more important because pets are with us for such a short time. People want to capture memories before they are gone. Fox Photography & Design founders Sharon and Katie Fox said they moved into pet photography by accident after taking pictures of pets with Santa one Christmas - and have since had requests to photograph alpacas, snakes, guinea pigs, cows and even chickens. "We got a job to do some cows out at Oakville and the owner had a bull in the paddock as well," Fox said. It didn't like what was going on so every now and then we'd have to run and jump for our lives over this fence. It was a bit of fun, but it got your heart rate up. Having established a niche reputation for shooting reptiles in studios, photographer Shannon Plummer branched out in 2007 to general pet photography and today Wet Nose Fotos is one of the largest pet photography businesses in Australia. With starter packs ranging from $850 through to ultimate packages at $3500, it is also one of the most expensive. "There's no posing, I let them loose to run around," she said. Plummer said the high-end prices reflected not only the quality of the photos and the extras, such as a popular coffee table book or canvas print, but an appreciation of photography as an art form. "And when you consider what we've been through - the GFC - we're talking about a luxury product during that time," she said. Wet Nose Fotos also runs workshops for pet owners to improve their happy snaps through to professional photographers looking to get into the field. Despite the adage about never working with children or animals, Precious Pets Photography owner Paul Sparrow said it was usually the owners who proved most difficult during shoots. "It's not the animals that wreck the photo, it's the owners," he said. You get a couple who are on the scene with you and one says 'get him to do this' and the other says 'no, what about this'. They start huffing and puffing, a stern word comes out and you will see the animal's facial expression change and you think 'that's it, it's all over. Photographing animals is a totally different skill set.