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When 17-year-old Jai Wadhwani points his camera at his subjects, they don’t say cheese. They might stare back, saunter away, hide or simply ignore him. On the rare occasion, they may growl.
For a year and a half, Wadhwani, a student at Palo Alto High School, has been photographing rescue dogs, cats and horses. And around 15-20 of his best pictures will be on display at the Rinconada Library on Feb. 4, from 2-3 p.m. to support local animal shelters.
It is a free event. The photos are for sale, though. And all proceeds will be donated to two animal shelters – Pets In Need, a local nonprofit that rescues and re-homes dogs and cats, and Sunrise Horse Rescue, a Calistoga-based establishment that looks after abused and abandoned horses.
“I’m trying to raise $7,500 for both,” Wadhwani said. He has already crossed the halfway mark. Wadhwani sells private photoshoots with pets in their homes and in parks, charging anywhere from $50 for 30 minutes to $165 for two hours.
“So we’re on the way toward the goal,” he said.
The photos are of varying sizes, ranging from 8-by-8-inch frames to 22-by-30-inch ones. Prices are based on size. “The bigger ones would be anywhere between $75-$100,” he said.
What prompted this busy high-schooler to take on a time-consuming project like this? He said it’s a great way to combine his love for animals and passion for photography.
The story runs a tad deeper, though.
Wadhwani always wanted a dog. In 2021, when his family decided to finally adopt one, they started the process by visiting a few animal shelters. His family ended up getting an Australian labradoodle, Milo. Because of his mom and sister’s allergies, they didn’t adopt him from a shelter. Still, when searching for a dog, Wadhwani saw how “the condition in the shelters was pretty poor. I saw lines and lines of animals in their cages. It was lonely, unsanitary,” he said. “I knew, since I love animals, that this wasn’t right.”
That’s when he decided to take matters into his own hands. “I thought I could make a change using my passion for photography – that I could maybe take some photos of local shelter animals and help raise awareness and help make a change in these animals’ lives,” Wadhwani said.
His journey with photography began in the fifth grade when he got his first camera. “It was a small, digital camera, nothing too fancy. Back then, I just used it to take photos of my friends, my family, to capture moments … I did that for a couple of years and really started to like it,” he said.
It was between the seventh and eighth grades that he got his first “real camera.” Currently, he uses Canon EOS R and Canon EOS R5. He takes out a prime lens for animals that can stay still during the process and a zoom lens for energetic animals who can’t.
So Wadhwani set out to photograph animals around Palo Alto.
Wadhwani learned about Sunrise Horse Rescue, a nonprofit horse shelter in Calistoga, thanks to a friend who rides.
“Horses who’re too old to race anymore and who don’t have a purpose anymore go to these shelters so that they can live out the rest of their lives with care,” he said. This care costs the shelter between $6,000 and $10,000 a year per horse. “I reached out to them, and their team was really supportive. They seem to care a lot about what they do, so I thought it would be a good fit.”
Wadhwani finds horses easier to photograph than dogs and cats.
“Horses are usually more calm, they stand still. I’ve seen some pretty, like, excited, rowdy dogs,” he said. That the horses’ care-takers usually get photographed with them helps. “They are able to control and kind of move the horse around.”
In contrast, photographing cats is “tricky.” For starters, unlike dogs, they’re not as easy to win over with a bag of treats. But it’s mostly about their personality.
“Cats are pretty shy, they want to hide. It’s usually more difficult for the owners to get the cats to come out or sit still for a second. They’re definitely the most difficult animal to photograph.”
A case in point is Wadhwani’s experience photographing a yellow-eyed cat that’s on the cover of his exhibit. The cat is one of three in a house that also has two dogs. They belong to a Palo Alto-based family known to Wadhwani through his little sister. Of the bunch, only one cat is featured in the exhibition.
“The cats were very, very scared of me. They kept on hiding; there was really nothing we could do to get them out,” he said. “I only saw them taking peeks around corners, around the walls, because they were curious about what I was doing … it was pretty challenging.”
Well, challenging as the task may be, Wadhwani said he’s continuing to hone his skills every day. What is now an afterschool and weekend activity might just become his profession in the future.
“I don’t really have set plans, but I think I’m going to continue photography through college. It’s really interesting, it’s really fun,” he said.
At any rate, he’s got Milo to practice on.
