Portraits worthy of the wall they will hang on.
Archival wall art and heirloom albums by Tom Wilhelm, award-winning portrait photographer, with a professional animal trainer on every session.
Your dog is only this dog once.
Dogs, cats, horses, and the ones who refuse to sit still. Every session is directed, unhurried and built around your animal’s temperament. You leave with finished artwork, not a folder of files, and there is never a sales table between you and the work.
Selected work
Four steps, and we are with you for every one
You will never be left wondering what happens next. We plan the session with you, direct every minute of it on the day, and put real prints in your hands before you decide anything.
We plan it together
Fifteen minutes on the phone. We talk about your animal, the room the artwork is going in, and what would make you happy to look at every day. You do not need to arrive with ideas.
We run the session
Two to three hours, fully directed, with a professional handler alongside us. You are not managing a leash and a camera at once. Your only job is to be with your animal.
We print, then we show you
Fifteen photographs, printed and mounted in their mats, in a folio box on the table in front of you. Not a screen. You hold them, spread them out, and choose from what is actually in your hands.
You take it home that day
You choose your collection, keep the photographs that go with it, and leave with them in your folio box the same afternoon. Only the wall portrait is made afterwards, once you have chosen which photograph belongs on the wall.
The folio box
Almost everyone arrives thinking about the photographs. What they keep is the box those photographs live in, and the fact that it sits somewhere they will actually see it.
Where your photographs actually live
A screen is where photographs go to be forgotten. Nobody scrolls back three years. The folio box is the opposite of that: a hand-made box in black leather that sits out on a table, and gets picked up.
There are two ways to have it. The windowed version turns the box into a frame: the lid stands open with one matted photograph on display, and you change which one whenever you like. The book version flips open the same way, but it is made for keeping. Its matted photographs lift straight out into frames of your own, so you can rotate what hangs on your wall through the year and put each one safely back afterwards. One is a frame you change the picture in. The other is a beautiful box for the pictures you hang. Same leather, same mats either way, and you do not have to decide today.
It is wrapped by hand in black leather, with the studio name embossed into the cover in gold, and lined throughout in soft white, so nothing competes with the photograph and nothing marks the print. Each photograph is mounted in an 11×14 mat cut to a 7×10 opening, heavy enough that you lift it and hold it by the edges, which is how a print is meant to be handled.
And nothing arrives weeks later in a courier van. Fifteen photographs are printed and mounted into their mats before we meet, and they are already in a folio box when you walk in. You choose your collection and the box you want it in, keep the photographs that go with it, and carry the whole thing out that afternoon.
One of them belongs on the wall
Every collection includes one matted wall portrait, and it is the piece visitors actually stop and look at. Eight by twelve, twelve by eighteen or sixteen by twenty-four, depending on which collection you choose.
Pick the room before you pick the photograph. A portrait made for above a fireplace is not the same picture as one made for a hallway, and knowing where it is going changes how we shoot on the day. That is most of what we talk about on the design call.
The only decision that matters is how much of them you want to keep
You decide at the reveal, with fifteen printed photographs spread out in front of you. The collection sets how many of them you keep, and every one you keep comes with its matching digital file.
- The folio box in black leather
- Five matted photographs
- One 8×12 matted wall portrait
- Matching digital images
- The folio box in black leather
- Ten matted photographs
- One 12×18 matted wall portrait
- Matching digital images
- The folio box in black leather
- All fifteen matted photographs
- One 16×24 matted wall portrait
- Matching digital images
Individual pieces start at $275. The session fee of $295 is separate and is settled before the day.
Included with every session: on-site animal handler · style and concept consultation · full direction · color correction on all images · retouching on wall portraits · social-ready digital files
Questions people ask
The things worth knowing before you book, answered plainly rather than buried in a brochure. If yours is not here, write to me and it probably will be next week.
Read the answersYour photographs, kept safe after you take them home
After the reveal, everything you chose goes into a private gallery of your own. Download the digital images that came with your collection, show the family, and order more prints later if you want them. Galleries stay open for twelve months.
Returning client
Your gallery link was emailed to you. It opens in a private area of this site.
Open my gallery
One photographer, and a trainer who reads your animal
I have been photographing since 2000, and pet portraiture is what I do now. Every session is mine from the first frame through to the finished print, so the person you speak to on the phone is the person behind the camera and the one who hands you the artwork.
Crystal, my wife and a professional animal trainer, works alongside me on every session. That is why these pictures look calm. Your animal is read rather than wrangled, and nothing is asked of it that it is not ready to give.
I work print-first. Files are lovely, but a portrait on a wall is what your family actually lives with, so we design the piece together before the shutter ever opens.
Let us hold a date while the aspens are still gold.
A $295 retainer secures your session and is applied in full to your session fee.