About Preston

I have always loved animals, and I have always had a passion for photography.

After twenty odd years of conducting Market Research and Strategic Planning for a large international conglomerate, I left the company to become an independent consultant. In between consulting projects I began to seriously pursue a career in photography, taking classes and interning with a nationally recognized commercial photographer.

My wife and I have two boys, both mixed tabbies, each with his own personality. Over the course of a couple of years while attending several cat shows in the Kansas City area where we live, I noticed that there were no photographers at the shows. I discovered that the regular cat photographer in the Midwest was working fewer and fewer shows and talking more and more of retirement. Meanwhile, I practiced on our boys and began piecing together a studio.

So began my journey into cat photography. I attended several cat shows where photographers were working and met as many as would chat with me, learning what I could. One such show was in Wichita, KS where I met a photographer named Helmi. She and her husband and partner, Ken, invited me into their studio to watch a couple of shoots, something none of the other photographers had ever done. We established an email dialogue and a friendship, and after sharing some of my work with her, she was gracious enough to recommend me to one of her friends who gave me my first show.

Since then I have been busy traveling across the Midwest shooting some of the most beautiful cats on earth and making friends with their humans.

Please take the time to visit my image gallery at

www.pbase.com/PrestonSmith/cats

All the best….Preston