GraceChon.

Specialties: Pets and owners, animal portraits, viral potential

Grace Chon is a commercial and editorial animal photographer, acclaimed worldwide for her highly expressive portraits of animals and authentic photos of people and their pets. Her clients include ad agencies, pet brands, magazines, publishing companies, celebrities, TV shows and more.

Grace has been photographing animals for 14 years, but before she stumbled upon the greatest job in the world, she was an award winning art director in advertising working for brands like California Milk, Panda Express, Shutterfly and more.

While working in the ad industry in 2008, Grace found herself feeling deeply unhappy with her career. She bought a camera to take photos of rescue dogs and soon after started a side hustle as a family pet photographer. Her business grew faster than she could have imagined! Nine months later, despite the “Great Recession,” she quit her day job to focus full time on animal photography and has never looked back.

Now as a commercial and editorial photographer, Grace works with clients like Purina, Milkbone, Fancy Feast, Woman’s Day Magazine, Men’s Journal, and celebrities like Chris Pratt, Chelsea Handler, Clinton Kelly and Boo the Dog. Her work is featured in advertising, magazines, greeting cards, calendars, books and television.

In 2014, her photo series “Zoey and Jasper,” featuring her son and rescue dog, went viral around the world, with mentions by The Huffington Post, Mashable, Good Morning America, Buzzfeed, The Today Show, and countless mentions by the international media.

In 2016, her photo series “HAIRY,” featuring dogs before and after their wildly cute haircuts, went viral again, with mentions by The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Refinery29, HelloGiggles, INSIDER, Yahoo, O the Oprah Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair Italia, and a number of international press from around the world. In 2018, newly photographed images from the “HAIRY” series went viral yet again, with mentions around the globe.

Grace is also the author of two dog photography books “Waggish: Dogs Smiling for Dog Reasons” and “Puppy Styled: Japanese Dog Grooming Before and After.”