You have an adventurous spirit and a deep, soulful bond with your dog. If that sounds like you, we’re meant to create something special together.
Your love story ... unleashed
Big White Dog Photography tells the epic love story between you and your dog – muddy paw prints, slobbery kisses and the wild freedom you only find together.
Mountains. Forests. Back roads. Parks in Coeur d’Alene. Doesn’t matter where. If it matters to you, it matters here.
You and your dog share something deep. Raw. Unapologetically real.
I’m Angela. Dog photographer.
I create art for the kind of love that becomes your heartbeat.
The story of Big White Dog Photography
Before Big White Dog Photography was a business, it was a life shared with two extraordinary dogs.
Shep put the camera back in my hands after a brief break from photojournalism for work. Bella showed me what I was meant to do with it.
They are not the whole story. But they are two of its most important chapters.
Chapter 1
My friend in Calgary called him “that idiot hairbag” because he wouldn’t leave her cats alone.
I called him my soulmate and my copilot in life.
Shep found me through rescue and carried me through a chapter of my life when I often felt alone. He led me out of the city and into the Rocky Mountains, where we hiked the Foothills and Banff National Park together.
And somewhere along those trails, he put the camera back in my hands after I had set it aside years before.
How can you stand in the most beautiful place in the world with the most beautiful dog in the world and not want to make photographs?
Shep left my world on Aug. 20, 2014. But I have the photographs. Hundreds — probably thousands — of images from the life we lived together.
They do not replace him.
They remind me that he was here. That we belonged to each other. That this entire story began with him.
Chapter 2
Bella came into my life nine days after Shep died. I was grieving, uncertain and riddled with guilt that loving another dog so soon might somehow mean replacing him.
She arrived with a story of her own to write.
For almost 12 years, we were glued together. We hiked and explored the Inland Northwest. We hunted for wild places around Spokane and Coeur d’Alene. We stood in forests, climbed onto rocks, wandered beaches and made a life out of following the next trail.
She was fierce, defiant, stubborn and gloriously independent. She protected me, challenged me and made it perfectly clear that love did not require obedience.
Bella was my best friend, my muse and the living heartbeat behind Big White Dog Photography. She taught me to pay attention to what dogs communicate. She taught me that the things others might consider imperfect — the weathered body, the crooked leg, the uncooperative ears — are often the very things that tell us who a dog truly is.
And she taught me that a photograph is not simply proof of how a dog looked. It is a record of how we loved them.
Bella died in 2026, and her absence is everywhere.
She remains present in the way I photograph, the way I listen to dogs and the way I understand the love and grief my clients carry into our work together.
Chapter 3
... to be written
This space is being held for someone I haven’t met yet.
Not a replacement. Not a continuation of Shep or Bella. A dog with their own mind, their own story and, undoubtedly, their own ideas about how this next chapter should unfold.
For now, the page remains unwritten.
But the space is here.
And then there's this jerk ...
Hi, I'm Angela Schneider — storyteller, adventurer, lover of dogs
My mother wanted a pretty little girl she could put in dresses and patent shoes. She got me.
With three brothers, I didn’t stand a chance of being anything but a tomboy. I’m messy. Rough around the edges. I swear a lot … like, a lot. Blame the newsrooms and the hockey players from my former life as a sportswriter.
I’m happiest outside with a camera in my hand, following a trail to see what might be waiting around the next bend.
I’m a recovering journalist who briefly detoured into marketing. Journalism was never just a job. It was a calling. I told stories of athletes, coaches, wins and losses.
I didn’t think I’d get two dream jobs in one lifetime.
Then Shep led me back to photography. Bella helped me understand why it mattered.
Now I tell the story between you and your dog: the ridiculous, complicated, muddy, breathtaking love story the two of you are writing together.
Because our dogs are not footnotes in our lives.
They are chapters.
Sometimes, they change the entire plot.
Little bits ... some important bits
- I studied English literature in university. I wrote my senior thesis on dream analogies in Shakespearean works. In two days.
- I own a Nikon M3, a Minolta Maxxum 7000, Pentax K-1000 -- all film cameras. The K-1000 is the first camera I worked with in my journalism career.
- My dream vacations are: the Tuscan region of Italy to visit the homeland of the Maremmano-Abruzzese sheepdog; Greece, because holy shit, they know FOOD; and Australia, because I've met online so many amazing Maremma lovers that I must visit.
- I believe in responsible breeding and in the necessity of rescues and adoptions. If it wasn't for the opportunity to rescue, I never would have met Shep. If it wasn't for responsible breeding, I never would have met Bella.
- I'm LGBTQ2S+ friendly. Nah, I'm LGBTQ2S+-fuckyeah. I love your community. and all of my friends who belong to it.
- Black lives matter. Indigenous lives matter.
- I was bullied and ostracized by the cool girls in junior high and high school. No one gets to feel like a wallflower around me. I will fix your crown.
- I've lived in five Canadian provinces — Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, British Columbia and Alberta — and one U.S. state, beautiful Washington.
- I've visited nine Canadian provinces; I'm missing Manitoba and all three territories on my list. I've visited or driven through 24 states.
When a chapter nears its end
Loving a dog always comes with a goodbye. Ever After sessions honor your dog’s life, your connection and everything you have shared.
The adventures. The quiet rituals. The quirks only you understand. The ordinary moments that became the best parts of your life.
Because every chapter deserves to be remembered.