For most people, retirement means slowing down. For Kelly McNamara, it meant finally having the freedom to decide exactly what she wanted her work to accomplish. After spending 25 years as an attorney, she retired from law in 2025 and turned her attention to something that had long mattered deeply to her: animals and photography. Today, McNamara is an award-winning professional pet and equine photographer based in Southern California. Through Kelly Mac Studios, she creates what she calls heirloom-quality “heARTwork,” focusing not only on the animals in front of her camera but also on the relationships people build with them.
Yet the biggest difference between her old career and her new one may not simply be the subject matter. Thanks to her pension, McNamara says her photography business does not need to generate significant income for her life to work, giving her the unusual freedom to build animal welfare directly into its purpose. Rather than treating charitable work as something separate from her business, she decided early on that giving back would be part of its foundation. That philosophy eventually took her much farther than a photography session ever could: to Spain, where she volunteered to help five rescued Galgos begin the journey toward their new lives in the United States.
Scroll down to follow Kelly’s story, and then meet the sighthounds whose portraits became part of her new photo series: Love at First Sight(hound).
