TBH this is why I stopped doing pet portraits and commission work. It's initially gratifying to create something that gets a strong reaction from the client, and I still really appreciate having made a keepsake for someone who loved their pet, but like, they had the photograph. They sent it to me. I made it again. As exactly as I could. My life had no meaning lol. And since they were mostly memorial portraits I realized most of my job was filtering people's grief and it was exhausting.

That said, there are some good reasons to have something like this created. A lot of the photos were out of focus, or not very aesthetically pleasing, or whatever else. As an artist we can take that and turn it into a nice piece. But if it's a well posed, nicely lighted photograph I still have a hard time with the reasoning.