Daily Inspiration: Meet Lauren and Dave Clark

Image Credits
Wendy Jo Photography www.wjphotography.net

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren and Dave Clark.

Hi Lauren and Dave, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We are a husband/wife photography team of DesiLu Photography that has been photographing all over North Carolina (and beyond) for the past 13 years. We are a photography school love story- where Dave studied commercial photography and Lauren studied wedding and portraits. In our business, Dave has focused on photography for architects and interior designers, headshots for small and large businesses, and landscape photography. Lauren’s focus has been portraiture of families, children, and pets and we have photographed weddings together.

In 2012 we joined a non-profit called Project Pearl as one of their photographers. Project Pearl photographed adoptable pets at our local animal shelter in hopes of getting more attention for the pets on social media and ever since then we have been hooked. We love using our photography skills to help the animals in need in our community.

We are now the photographers for our local Humane Society and provide #fridayfosterfeature photos for long-term fosters for other local rescues. And through that, we developed a deep love of pet photography. You can call us dog crazy- we have 6 rescues of our own (and yes we met several of them during our photography sessions) and think dogs are family.

We love it when families include their pets in family portraits. After 2020, we sat down to evaluate what brings us the most joy in our work, and any day photographing a dog is a good day. We started DesiLu Pet Portraits to give this love of pet portraiture a special place in our business. We photograph pets and the people that love them across North Carolina (and beyond).

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
While we LOVE what we do, photography is not the easiest path and I am sure any artist/small business can relate to it. Dave and I both love the photography and editing aspects of our job but there is so much more to it.

The business part is a challenge for us both. People tell to us it must be nice to photograph dogs all day. I wish that was all day every day. But 80% of our time is spent behind a computer culling and/or editing images, responding to emails and maintaining client communication, working on social media content, studio management, and so on…

But I feel so incredibly lucky and grateful that this is what I get to do for a living and that I have my best friend/partner there by my side on this journey.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
With our Pet Photography, we take all of our experiences from photography school, commercial, landscape, and portrait photography to create Unique. Bold. Fun Portraits of Pets and the People that love them. Dave has an incredible eye for architecture, landscapes, and lighting and I think that is what really makes our pet portraits stand out.

And with our background of a family portrait, we are really able to capture the connection between pets and their owners.

What do you think about happiness?
Easy… photographing dogs and travel! And when we can do those things together- life is good. Lauren is a wanderer at heart and loves to travel and Dave loves to photograph beautiful places.

You will often find us traveling with our camper van and vintage trailer and our dogs! We also love to be out on the water either on our boat, paddle boards, or kayaks and mountain biking and hiking.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.desilupetportraits.com
• Instagram: @desilupetportraits
• Facebook: @desilupetportraits