Liz Dranow is 2025’s photographer of the year.  That’s according to the Intermountain Professional Photographers Association, who awarded Dranow at its photography competition in November based on her high-scoring images, which won two first-place awards, a second and a third place.  Dr anow beat out 24 other artists entering nearly 200 images in 11 categories. Five Professional Photographers of America-trained Master Judges outside of Utah judged each work using the rigorous 12 Elements of a Merit Image, which evaluate areas such as visual impact, composition, lighting, technical excellence, storytelling and more. Her photography focuses on professionally capturing and immortalizing animal companions through her business, Time Punk Pet Photography. By day she’s a biostatistician at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine and even volunteers at Salt Lake County Animal Services taking photographs of animals awaiting adoption.  It’s a prestigious title, said Dranow’s peers and fellow members of the Park City Photography Club, who also competed in the event.  “Liz is to be congratulated,” David Breslauer said, “because she just didn’t win a bunch of awards. She won a nice overall award being photographer of the year. The competition is pretty steep because she’s going up against a lot of other professional photographers that have been doing it for a really, really long time and are really quite talented. This is a big deal.” For years, Dranow has been working to improve her technical skills in order to better capture life’s companions. She is in her second year of a three-year pet photography course through a group called Unleashed Education, and one of her first-place photos actually came from when she was out exploring with a dog as part of her coursework, looking for a totally different shot.  Parkite Liz Dranow won first place at the Intermountain Professional Photographers Association’s 2025 competition for “Symbiosis,” a photo of dog Ludo on Antelope Island. “Symbiosis,” first place in animal portraiture, shows a dog on Antelope Island at sunset. The dog, named Ludo, perches its front legs up and looks out to the lake as twilight shadows over Fremont Island in the background. Ludo’s pose is solid, confident, and each leg is clearly defined and bathed in golden light. His ears are relaxed, which shows he’s interested but not alert, a difficult moment to capture a dog in, Dranow said. The impeccable composition evokes a sense of exploration not unlike the famous “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich.     “We were out, and the sun was starting to come down, and he was just standing up there looking all majestic,” Dranow said. “And I’m like, ah, this is really cool. This is really pretty. And so I played around with this to be able to get where there was enough of the depth of field to be able to actually get Fremont island there in the background but still have him in focus, as though he’s gazing out across the lake.” That’s deceptively challenging. Dranow said a goal for her lately has been to take more photos of dogs and animals in landscapes, which presents a technical challenge with a huge creative payoff. She draws a line between the importance of the environment and pets, how both are crucial to our survival in their own way. It’s part of why she titled this photo “Symbiosis.”  “We can’t exist without the lake … Just as we can’t exist without our dog,” Dranow said. “I was trying to tie in that same connection that we have with our pets, but also tying into the connection that we have with our landscape and how really important that was.” While Dranow had other award-winning photos this year, she said “Symbiosis” encapsulates what she’s trying to do with her work. In 2025, her ability may have finally caught up to her ambition.  “I have put a lot of effort in the last several years to really up my skills,” she said, “I’ve had the very big goal of, I want to be better … so that I could be able to, if I had a mental image of what I wanted, to be able to technically do that. And now I’m really taking those and putting it towards the creative side of things.” Liz Dranow’s “Devotion” won first place for male portraiture at the Intermountain Professional Photographer Association’s annual competition. Credit: Photo courtesy of Liz Dranow Dranow’s other first-place award was for male portraiture with “Devotion,” an image of a man embracing his dog. This was a photo for a client, Dranow said, and she submitted it for the competition because it was a particularly meaningful shoot, one of what she calls “end of life sessions.”  “This (photo), honestly, there’s a fair amount of things that could be done better with it,” Dranow said. “But the thing that really just grabbed me with this session is that this guy and his dog just had such this amazing connection.”  Four of the five competition judges at first dismissed the photo for its technical shortcomings, such as errant hairs on the man’s jacket that they said distracted creatively from the photo. One judge fought back, and in the end the photo won first.  The bond on display was strong enough to overcome the photo’s weaknesses, Dranow said. In fact, the dog passed away a week or so after the session. “The guy was very aware that the dog wasn’t going to be with him much longer,” she said. “He was starting to get emotional with his dog, which happens quite a bit, and I understand that, and I really try to give people the space to feel that.”  Dranow said she was struck by how the two looked at each other. Both aging, in a moment they touched their gray hairs together, and Dranow felt their profound connection — and captured it.  “This dog is not going to leave his heart,” she said. “He may not physically be with him, but they’re going to be there.” Dranow shot the photo with a long lens from far away. With photos like this, you want the subjects to feel like they’re really with each other, not posing for a camera. The connection has to be real.  “I knew when I got it,” she said. “That was the one that I’m going to keep.” “Warmth On Winter’s Shore” won Liz Dranow second place in animal portraiture. Credit: Photo courtesy of Liz Dranow “Lift-Off!” won third place in animal portraiture. Credit: Photo courtesy of Liz Dranow Dranow’s other two winning photos were “Warmth On Winter’s Shore” and “Lift-Off!,” which won second and third place in animal portraiture, respectively. “Warmth” shows a dog looking at the camera as it stands on a lake’s edge. Its paws are wet and muddy, and the water behind is still and glassy. “Lift-Off!” shows a dog leaping in the snow.  Those photos, combined with her two first-place awards, netted Dranow enough merit to be considered photographer of the year.  “Honestly, I’m extremely pleased and honored that I did get the photographer of the year,” she said, “because this is, again, something that I really have been working hard on. And so I’m very, very flattered and honored that I actually got that.” Dranow also partially credits her growth as a photographer to her experiences with the Park City Photography Club, which meets on the second Monday of every month at the Park City Library. Anyone interested is welcome, she said, and can attend or reach out via the club’s Facebook page at facebook.com/groups/ParkCityPhotographyClub. The post Local pet photographer awarded photographer of the year appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less