Amy - volunteer photographer Amy has always enjoyed watching and interacting with all sorts of animals. Initially spending a lot of time bird watching and bird ringing, this led her to photographing them. Wanting to develop her skills she started to photograph Daisy May, the family dog. This is when she really started to experiment with different types of photograph, turning a simple photograph into a piece of art. Putting our dogs in the picture Being deaf herself, she volunteered for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. Allowing her to work with dogs that were in all stages from training to placement with a deaf recipient. Because she enjoyed this so much she started to look for other dog charities were she could volunteer her skills in a similar way. Our centre at Thirsk in North Yorkshire eagerly accepted her offer of assistance and now she photographs the dogs for adoption in the most appealing ways in order to grab the attention of potential adopters. Later, Amy expanded her volunteering in order to also photograph the dogs at our East Yorkshire centre and to offer photo shoots at our events in order to raise funds as well. What better way to spend your day Amy really enjoys her role as it gives her lots of opportunities to photograph all types of dogs in different locations both indoors and outdoors. In turn she finds this develops her skills and inspire new ideas. She gets satisfaction giving something back to dog charities and assisting the dogs to find their forever homes. Encouraging others to volunteer as it feels good to give something back, she says she always falls in love with one or two dogs and wants to take them home! She always has a laugh and lots of fun watching dogs that come in for their photography sessions, because all dogs have different characters. Finding every shoot enjoyable, because the dogs want to interact and play and be stimulated. This means she gets to take photographs which is my passion but also make new friends and renew old friendships every time she does a shoot. Amy recommends it quoting “It’s not a bad way to spend your day”. We completely agree! You can see a lot of Amy's work on our web site but do check out more of her work at: www.livingportraits.co.uk Please visit our volunteer pages if you're able to support us with some of your precious time.