What Happens After Your Dog Photo Session
Most photography guides focus on what happens before or during a session. But for a lot of clients, the biggest source of uncertainty is what happens after: what do I actually receive, when do I receive it, and what do I do with it? Here's exactly how the post-session process works — from the moment we wrap up at the location to the moment you have something hanging on your wall.
Culling — Selecting the Best Images
I shoot several hundred frames in a typical session. This isn't because I'm spraying and praying — it's because dog photography at its best is fast, responsive, and requires anticipating moments that haven't happened yet. When you're working with an animal who moves unpredictably, expresses emotion in brief flickers, and can't be directed in the way a human subject can, volume of frames is how you guarantee you caught the best version of each moment.
From those several hundred frames, I deliver 30 to 50 final edited images. The culling process is methodical. I remove the technically imperfect first: frames where the dog's face is out of focus, where motion blur has softened a critical area, where the exposure is too far gone to recover cleanly. Then I remove the compositionally weak: frames where a limb is cut awkwardly, where the dog's body position doesn't read well, where the background is distracting in a way that can't be edited out. Then I remove the near-duplicates, keeping the strongest frame from each expression or position grouping.
What survives that process is the actual best work from the day. Clients sometimes ask whether they can see the full shoot — the “raw” unedited selects — and the honest answer is that it wouldn't serve you well. The 30 to 50 images I deliver are the session. The rest are the scaffolding that made those images possible.
Editing — What I Do and Don't Do
Every image I deliver goes through a full editing pass. I work in Lightroom for the global adjustments — color balance, exposure, contrast, clarity, highlight and shadow recovery — and move to Photoshop for any localized retouching. For dog photography, that retouching typically means leash removal (all dogs stay on leash during sessions for safety; leashes are always removed in post), distracting background element removal, and any stray hairs or debris on the dog that caught harsh light.
What I don't do is heavy retouching. I don't warp body proportions, I don't do extreme skin or coat smoothing, and I don't replace backgrounds with artificial scenes. I want the portrait to look like your actual dog in actual light — the light from that specific morning, in that specific location, during the specific expression that made the shot worth keeping. Heavy editing erases all of that. The goal is to optimize what was there, not to manufacture something that wasn't.
My editing style skews warm and natural. I pull for accurate color rendering on coat color — getting black dogs to look genuinely black with visible texture rather than a featureless dark mass, getting golden dogs to look golden rather than orange or washed out. Coat color accuracy is something I care about specifically because I know how important it is for clients to see their dog as they actually are.
Delivery Timeline
You will receive your final gallery within 2 to 3 weeks of your session date. I don't rush the editing process — the post-processing on a full session is several hours of careful work, and I'd rather deliver it right than deliver it fast. That said, I always aim to be at or under the 2-week mark when the schedule allows.
Delivery comes as a private online gallery link sent to the email on your booking. The gallery hosts your full resolution downloads, and it stays active for 60 days. Within that window you can download, share, order prints, and review. After 60 days the gallery closes, so make sure you download your images within that period. I recommend downloading them immediately and storing them in at least two places — cloud storage and a local drive.
If you need an expedited turnaround — a birthday gift, a memorial piece, a specific deadline — tell me at booking and I'll do my best to accommodate it. I can't guarantee rush delivery in every circumstance, but I always try.
Products — Prints, Wall Art, and Albums
Your gallery includes your high-resolution digital images — they are yours to keep, download, and print, included with your package. If you also want gallery-quality wall pieces, the full range of print products I offer — fine art prints, canvas wraps, framed prints, metal prints, and albums — is orderable directly through the gallery at published prices, whenever you like. There is no mandatory ordering appointment.
These products are produced by a professional lab, not a consumer printing service. The color accuracy, archival quality, and physical construction are categorically different from home printing or a pharmacy print order. A professional fine art print is made on paper that will last decades without fading, using a calibrated printing process that matches the colors I edited on my calibrated display. Consumer printing services can't match that, and the difference is visible.
The most popular product I sell is the canvas wrap — a stretched canvas print that arrives ready to hang, frameless, with the image wrapping around the edges. For a living room, a hallway, or a bedroom, a 20x24 or 24x30 canvas of a dog portrait has an impact that a screen image simply can't replicate. You can browse the full range of available products on the products page.
What to Do With Your Images
Print something. I say this to every client, and I mean it. The most common thing I hear from people who lost a dog in the years after their session is that they wish they had printed sooner. The files exist on your hard drive or in cloud storage, but they don't live there the way a framed print on the wall lives in your home.
A 16x20 canvas on the wall will be noticed and commented on by every visitor to your home. It will be the first thing you see when you walk past the hallway, the last thing you look at before you leave the house in the morning. When your dog is gone — and this is the hard reality of loving a dog — that image becomes something you can't replace. The digital file is precious. A physical print on the wall is irreplaceable.
Beyond the wall print, there are things you can do with your images that people often don't think of immediately: custom holiday cards, gifts for family members who love your dog, a photo book that documents a specific season or chapter of your dog's life. The gallery is the raw material. What you make from it is up to you — and I'm always happy to advise on which images would work best for specific products or purposes.
If you're curious about what the full experience looks like from start to finish, the guide on what to expect at a professional dog photography session covers the before and during in detail to complement this post.
Interested in booking a session?
All-inclusive packages start at $395, with your digital images included. I serve the South Shore from Rockland, MA.
Book a session →Related guide: How Long Does a Dog Photo Session Take? — how long sessions run, what affects pacing, and planning around your dog's energy.
Related guide: How to Memorialize Your Dog — beyond delivery — memorial portrait planning for dogs who have passed or are nearing the end.
Related guide: Memory Session Dog Photography — dedicated last-portrait sessions for senior or end-of-life dogs.
“It was so fun and easy to work with Chris, and our dogs loved him, too! The photos and artwork are beautiful! Highly recommend booking a session.”
About the Author
Chris McCarthyProfessional Dog Photographer · Rockland, MA · 11+ years experience
I've photographed hundreds of dogs across the South Shore and Greater Boston since 2014 — every breed, size, age, and temperament. My own rescue, Sully, was reactive and anxious when I got him, and working with him every day taught me how to photograph dogs that other photographers find difficult. I specialize in reactive and shy dogs, seniors, and memory sessions — the sessions that matter most and need the most patience.