The Soul Dog collection was put together during my first semester at the Australian National University. I had enrolled in the certificate of photography at the School of Arts. It was meant to take me two years to complete the course on a part time basis, but after one semester I found out we were moving to the USA, so I put my studies on hold.

The body of work I submitted at the end of six months consisted of six large canvasses, each featuring a close up portrait of a dog who was making direct eye contact with me. The premise was that the eyes are the window to the soul. I was trying to get across that dogs are not mere soul-less creatures, but do in fact have a very important place in this world.

The first of the collection was the inspiration for the remainder of the images. I completely fell in love with this image of Lexie and when I saw it I knew how I wanted to complete the body of work. This montage shows the completed canvas. While the processing I’ve undertaken for this series looks a little less than perfect on the computer screen, the results on canvas were magic.

I really hope that when I return to Australia get to go back to Canberra so I can complete this course.

Over the next six weeks I’ll bring you each of the images in the collection.