2025 Action Category Winners – Sylvain Langler & Rudy Anthoine

In 2019, after a trip to Yellowstone National Park in the United States and observing some magnificent wildlife, Rudy decided to buy a camera, but didn’t use it much for a while. One year later, he had a lot of free time and decided to practice photography. He posted on a Facebook group to photograph pets for free. Someone offered to come and photograph a litter of Cocker Spaniel puppies; this was his first experience in this field.

After that, we spent part of our free time photographing wild animals as a hobby. We live in a mountainous region and there is plenty to do around our home. We had the opportunity to go back together to photograph some dogs at the same person’s house, and that made us decide to make it our profession.

We followed the training course of Audrey Bellot shortly after, because we were doing outdoor photography in addition to studio work at the time. The last big step was in early 2024, when we decided to focus solely on studio work, and we joined the online course of Keegan O’Neil from Floofy Studios.

We always do ball throws during our photoshoots with our clients, and that’s the context of this photo. For us, it’s important that the sessions are fun for the dogs, and we love taking candid photos. We use colorful backgrounds which, in our opinion, go well with the energy of dogs, and their innocent, joyful and playful side. When editing the photos, we focus on contrasts, brightness and colors.

We make sure Rudy, who’s taking the photos, doesn’t end up with a Husky charging at him to catch the ball! More seriously, Sylvain, who throws the ball, must ensure that the action takes place as close to the center of the backdrop as possible (neither too far left nor too far right). He must then quickly step back so as not to block the light from a flash positioned behind him. When you’re used to it and confident with your camera and flash settings, it becomes pretty easy; dogs generally love chasing balls! We like to vary the ball throws to get a variety of photos.

This is a great honor for us. To be honest, we weren’t expecting it at all! It’s a great recognition of our work. When we started dog photography 4 years ago, we never imagined winning such a prestigious award. Today, we’re proud of how far we’ve come, and we can’t wait to see how our photography journey evolves in the years to come!

We’ve been traveling to different cities in France and Belgium for almost a year now, offering photoshoots with clients, and we hope to be able to travel to new cities next year! We’re also planning to launch an online training program in 2026. We’re receiving more and more requests from photographers who would like to know how we photograph dogs in a studio. Finally, we would like to try to collaborate with dog magazines that are concerned about animal welfare.