Our Buddy Sawyer
There's a version of this story where I never pick up my camera at all.
When we got Sawyer's diagnosis, I was standing in the checkout line at Dick's Sporting Goods buying Christmas gifts for my kids. You are never prepared to find out the lump on your dog's leg is cancerous and that it had spread to his spine. Photographing him was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to sit on the kitchen floor with him and not move. I wanted more time. I wanted the vet to have looked at the scan again and come back with something different. Worst of all? How was I going to tell my kids?
He didn't have much time, maybe a month left. Of course this was just in time for Christmas. Then my 18 year old pressed me as he knew something was really wrong. We told both boys.
The two of them
Shane was 8 when we brought Sawyer home. Shane was having a hard time settling into our new home and having just returned from living in Italy for almost four years. When they saw each other at the barn, they both seemed to fall in love with each other. They were never the pair that performed for anyone. Their whole relationship seemed to evolve as two people needing to be found.
That's the thing I most wanted to hold onto. Not a portrait of a boy and a dog. A portrait of them — the particular, unrepeatable bond of what they had.
The session
We did it in the afternoon at home, by our front door where Sawyer would greet Shane after school. Nothing was styled. Sawyer was tired by then and we didn't even have him wearing a collar at that point.
Shane just played with him as he always did, only this meant something more.
I photographed his hands in his fur. The gray in his face.
At one point seeing the joy this brought to Shane's face nearly gutted me and I'll have this photo forever.
What I know now that I didn't before
I've photographed families through a lot — new babies, last summers before college, milestones people wanted marked. I thought I understood why documenting a season matters.
I understood it differently after this.
Don't wait for a better day. Honestly, I kept putting it off. He was having a rough week and I kept thinking we'd catch him on a good one. There aren't as many good ones left as you think. Ordinary and tired is still them.
You don't need a beautiful location. Our front steps is nothing special, but it was special to them. It's where they were. That's what made it right.
Let it be quiet. I didn't ask for anything, I let them be. The pictures I love most are the ones where nobody was performing anything.
For anyone in this season
Sawyer passed away and we have his memory in framed photos.
If you're somewhere in this same stretch — if you got news you didn't want, and you're wondering whether it's worth it to make photographs when everything feels heavy — I'd tell you yes. Gently, and without pressure, but yes.
If that's where you are right now, reach out. I'll make room.
Heather O'Mara Photography — portrait and family photography on Philadelphia's Main Line and at the Jersey Shore. Real moments. Genuine emotion.
