Today we’d like to introduce you to David and Sylvaine Capron.
Hi David and Sylvaine, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
We started as Emotion Portrait Studios in our garage 20 years ago. For the 5 years or so operating in that guise, we were specifically geared towards traditional family photography, including opening our first studio on the literal eve of the 2007/2008 financial crisis, fun times! We’d always encouraged families to bring their dogs to the session, and over those years, we’d noticed the sessions with dogs were always a degree more relaxed; it seems to take the pressure off the humans to pose and behave as if they’re having their portraits made.
The morph into becoming Dogma Pet Portraits came in 2010. We’d serendipitously photographed the founder of Just Food For Dogs, his partner, and Simon a couple of times before he, a serial entrepreneur, had even come up with the idea for fresh, healthy dog food cooked in the premises that it was being sold.
When he started the enterprise, he tapped us to take the photos for packaging and publicity, which prompted us to get serious and develop our dog-focused brand.
Essentially, we went from being a studio that encouraged humans to include their dogs to a studio that now encourages dogs to bring their humans to the photo session.
More fun times as Covid arrived and forced the closure of the studio, you couldn’t think of company more susceptible to it than a studio only photography business.
Silver linings, however. As Covid receded, we moved into our very beautiful new studio, right next door to Just Food For Dogs flagship store in Costa Mesa, where we’d been for 3 years.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We signed the lease the week that Lehman Brothers went down, really, we did. It was an actual deliberate decision; everyone knew there was a crisis brewing, and we figured we had 2 choices. Hunker down, stay in the garage, keep the costs down and ride it out, or attempt to elevate the business and offer a more upmarket experience to that customer that wasn’t going to be as affected by what was about to happen. We chose the latter, and while it wasn’t easy, it did train us to think in terms of what we were providing as an experience and what that was worth. Covid, having your pictures taken in an enclosed space with people you didn’t know was tailor-made to check all the boxes that meant we couldn’t operate under any guidelines for at least that first year and a half. We were able to engineer an outdoor enclosed studio at our home that helped keep the bills paid, though it was tricky adhering to the various guidelines that came and went.
I should note the gratitude we have for all the wonderful customers that did support us through those times. Pet people are just wonderful.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
DOGS, man’s first friend!
I seem to have a natural affinity for them, natural Fuzz therapy on a daily basis who doesn’t love that?
We were led to/discovered a photography niche, Dogs and their people. There’s plenty of people who photograph families and plenty who photograph dogs, but we really specialize in studio portraits of dogs and their people and capturing that most ancient of relationships. We’ve worked hard to develop that niche and been lucky to have a lot of great supporters over the years that have helped us along the way.
What I think we’re probably most proud of is the opportunity we have to work with the rescue community. Every month, we set aside a day where we invite one of the many hard-working rescue groups to bring their available dogs to the studio and make their portraits free of charge. The groups are then free to use those portraits as they see fit for websites, flyers, etc. Some have even ended up on freeway billboards and trucks.
We try and build fundraising activities around those events; we even photograph hounds for the Basset Hound Rescue of Southern California’s annual fundraising calendar.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Perseverance. The operation is a partnership between husband and wife, we discovered something that we both enjoy doing and we’ve constantly worked at being able to succeed in keeping that going while making a living for ourselves and our family. We’re unlikely to ever be driving Bentleys around, but we live in Southern California and got two kids through college.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dogmapetportraits.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dogmapetportraits/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DogmaPetPortraits
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dogmapetportraits
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/dogma-pet-portraits-costa-mesa-2
