Photographer Gerrard Gethings is standing in his garden. Wearing chinos a shade of blue that Farrow & Ball could sell by the boatload, with his border terrier Baxter under one arm and his baby Jarvis in the other, he makes for quite a picture himself. He’s that beardy kind of handsome and he smiles a lot. Proper smiles too, the kind that spread to your eyes. Apparently, the secret to getting a great shot – when you're working with animals, at least – is to whispers words like “fish” with a quiet kind of urgency. ‘Just whisper and make it sound appealing. It works [for Baxter]. I think he thinks 'what’s he on about? I better start listening. Hopefully he might say chicken’. He knows that word.'

He certainly does. Immediately, Gethings has the dog's unblinking attention. Grinning, he continues ’Beef is his favourite. Beef even more so than chicken’. And at that point, though perfectly still for the photograph, Baxter begins softly whining in a way that would break your heart. ‘Oh, because now he thinks he’s getting beef!’

It is a relationship that warms the cockles, the classic a man and his dog story. But it’s more than that because Gethings directly attributes his success to Baxter. ‘Everything comes down to Baxter. It really does. It sounds cheesy, but I was thinking about it earlier. I started photographing him, I would take him on walks and I would take a camera. Then I was taking a couple of lights. Then I was taking stands. On his walks I was taking so much equipment that it was getting ridiculous! And then on his walks I would get other dogs involved that I saw out. It grew from there.’

That was six and a half years ago, and since then Gethings's profile has steadily grown. This week his first photography exhibition opened in association with PetsPyjamas to raise money for the Dogs Trust. And his work has now appeared across newspapers and websites; even fashion bloggers are writing about his photographs. Such is the power of a picture of an adorable dog.

The words ‘animal photography’ typically conjure old-fashioned, cheesy images, but there is nothing twee about these, and nothing cute or sweet about them either. Your nana probably wouldn’t hang one on her wall, and you probably would. They are strong, compelling and contemporary. ‘I had seen the Tim Flach book - anyone who photographs any animals has been influenced by him in one way or another - he’s the king of that kind of stuff. And when I saw that I thought OK, you can do it like that, you can do it properly, you don’t need to be some divvy, taking twee pictures just because they are dogs. I don’t want them doing doggy things like panting, looking up at you and panting. I can’t abide it.’

There are two calling cards of Gethings work: a close crop and the depiction of a human trait. ‘I always look for something human. A human characteristic that I recognise, when I see that I know that is the shot. Because when you look at a picture and you see that, you can relate to it immediately.’

And people do relate. After photographing dogs in his spare time for a couple of years, Gethings self-published a book chronicling 100 different breeds of dogs. That’s when he knew he was on to something. ‘A few people got to see it and they just instantly liked the stuff. And I started to get work. It also coincided with social networking becoming part of my life. Things like Instagram and Twitter really get you out there really quickly and it spreads. It’s part of the reason why I stopped the painting and started with the full time photography thing. I just started getting work almost immediately. People liked it. They responded much more than to the paintings. So I though, do you know what, maybe I’m flogging a dead horse there?’

The subject of Gethings's paintings is a recurring one throughout the interview. When you are in his home it’s hard not to return to them, because his pieces, large, abstract and beautiful are hanging on every wall. You wonder why he’s not still painting, and why they aren’t hanging on more walls, like the walls of the Tate?

His response is refreshingly honest and pragmatic, and is almost as charming as his habit of saying ‘ta very much’ in that lovely dulcet tone of his. ‘I wanted to be a painter, I didn’t want to be a photographer, I thought it was a cop out. It’s not as hard as painting. Painting is really hard. A photographer would do a photograph and endlessly reproduce the prints, and sell them. And that seemed to me to be unfair. They would do that and it would take me 3 months to do a painting. That I could only sell once, and then it’s gone. So I stuck with the painting for ages and ages.’

So photography wasn’t Gethings's first career choice, but it wasn’t his second either. First, he tried his luck as a musician, forming a band aged 16 with mates. Smiling, he explains that growing up in Wigan ‘like a lot of northern lads he had aspirations of being rock star’. But friends in another band ‘The Verve became 'The Verve', and we didn’t’, so he decided to cut his losses and pursue career number two: artist. ‘I painted all my life, even as a kid. Even in the band. It sort of became a no brainer really.’

It was this ambition that set him on the path towards photography. It pulled him to London (via Manchester and Sheffield - where he studied fine art at university) in search of work. There a chance meeting with a man called Jim resulted in a very cheap studio space rental in Mayfair above a ‘really posh’ shop that ‘sells antiques to people like Elton John’. Serendipitously, this studio was next door to Terry O’Neill’s, the renowned fashion photographer. Instantly they struck up a friendship and Gething ended up working for him for ten years.

Right now, aged 43, Gerrard Gethings is looking for a new challenge. Not because he doesn’t love his dog portraits, but because he feels he has conquered the oeuvre. ‘I know I am going to get it [the shot]. There use to be an element of uncertainty. Like ‘This dog might be an idiot, run all over and I might not get it’, whereas now I know what to do, and I always get it.’

So what’s next then I ask? Cats, guinea pigs, or now that you have a baby, will it be people? Laughing he says ‘I always do people; I still do people. Yesterday I shot a real human person, but it’s not what I am interested in. The next big project will definitely be hawks.‘ Hints are dropped at what that might mean, ‘but not the obvious hawk you see on a colourama. These [shots] will involve a collaboration.’. Which seems like a wonderfully apt subject for an artist’s career that’s just beginning to take off.  

Gerrard Gethings's exhibition The Company of Dogs is open to the public from 21 March to 29 March 2024 between 10am to 5pm at The Gallery, 81 Leonard Street, EC2A 4QS.

The exhibition is in association with PetsPyjamas with proceeds going to the Dogs Trust. You can bid on pieces in the exhibition online here.