Sharon Canovas used to charge $75 for a session with around 40 photos, and it was turning into a very expensive hobby. Today her average sale is around $2,000, and she has booked out spring, summer and autumn in a row. She did it while working full time as a stunt woman, and while recovering from a concussion.
In this episode, Ina sits down with Sharon, a pet photographer in Hamilton, Ontario, who has spent twenty years doing stunts for film and TV. Sharon first came on the podcast in February, after her first fully booked spring. They talk about marketing for pet photographers when your time is not your own, why she raised her prices three times, how she sells photo albums, and what changed when she moved from Ina's marketing workshop into the Mastermind.
Key takeaways:
A planned year keeps your marketing going when you can't. Sharon got a concussion last year, and this year it brought panic attacks, anxiety attacks and having to teach herself Photoshop again. Because she had already planned her marketing for the year, with everything scheduled in HoneyBook and her landing pages done, she could keep going one small step at a time.
Three things a night will move your marketing forward. Sharon sets a marketing goal for the month, and each night she writes down three things she has to do the next day to support it. On set she can be gone fifteen hours a day, so she answers emails and blogs in her lunch hour and photographs dogs on the weekend.
Posting on social media is not marketing. Before the workshop, Sharon would post, hold her breath and hope for the best. She dropped business cards at pet stores, and the only thing that reliably worked was the Pet Expo. Now she runs a variety of marketing, and she is taking half of November off to plan next year.
The clients who value your work won't question your prices. Sharon went from $75 to $250 to $350, and says it got scary. What settled it for her was hiring a pet photographer herself, for close to $1,400. Her average sale is now around $2,000, and she is raising her prices again next year.
Put the album in their hands before you talk about it. The photo album is what Sharon sells most. At every consultation the album is in the client's hands while she talks, and she shows videos of albums she has designed for other clients so they can picture their own. A payment plan helps too: "A lot of people don't wanna put two thousand dollars on their credit card."
The group is where the ideas get better. Sharon brought an idea to the Mastermind: a colour palette to help clients work out what to wear next to their dog's coat. Ina built it in under an hour, and every member now has it. "It's a very lonely business," Sharon says, "and coming up with ideas sometimes it can be very exhausting."
Connect with Sharon:
Website: https://canovasphotography.com
Instagram: @scanovasphotography
Resources mentioned:
Sharon's first episode on The Pet Photographers' Journal, February 2026:
Listen on Captivate
Listen on Spotify
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Connect with Ina
Instagram: @inaj.thepetphotoceo
Email: [email protected]
Mentoring & Coaching for Pet Photographers: https://www.inajeducation.com/coaching
