Can You Take My Picture?

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Furries gathered at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., for a group photo. In the past, small furry friend groups would see the cherry blossoms bloom in the spring. How did it become so large? (Photo by Hypercat, via Furtrack)

Right when the first cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom, just over 300 furries came down to Washington, D.C., last month. Touring the Tidal Basin and the National Mall, they walked around to take in the majestic sight of bright pink cherry petals. While 13 days too soon from what is deemed “peak bloom”, some other trees were budding or blooming entirely.

Furs from all over came as part of an evolved and growing field trip in the fandom to visit the annual spectacle on March 14th. Furs local to D.C., including in the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia—known locally as the DMV—came, of course, but so did people from further afar. It’s been for decades a trip that furries’ friend groups would go down to the Tidal Basin, I’m told, to take in the sight of hundreds of thousands of beautiful petals in fursuit. These excursions were previously ad-hoc, small, private outings amongst friends for years by different groups of people. How did it become so large and organized?

The budding years

What appears to be the first formalized fur walk for the cherry blossoms started in 2022 by a black, yellow, and white wolf named Sylox, who invited local furs to come to an outing. After that success, in February 2023, he started FurUp, an organization for “doing events that weren't present at the time as well as starting a 2nd furry convention” in the DMV, he told me in a direct message. The first furry convention of the area of course being Fur the ‘More, which recenty returned to Baltimore. After a few years of increasing attendance, around 150 people turned up last year to the cherry blossom walk.

Separately, in September 2024, Gladis, an orca, organized D.C. FurRide, a fursuit trip in the Metro a few months after he moved to the area, in May. He told me that he did this because, after getting his fursuit, he had the want to take a photo wearing it on the Metro, and also to emulate a See Something Say Something ad featuring an Easter bunny costume on a subway platform. “I thought that picture was so funny. I was like, ‘I want to go to the Metro and take this picture with my fursuit and recreate it.’”

After doing so, he decided to do a small meetup on the Metro. “Maybe I’ll get like 10 people that want to tag along just to hang out,” he told me, imagining that “we’d get pizza or something.” Instead, about 40 came to the first event he’d ever hosted. Washingtonian ran a delightful piece on it.

At the second FurRide, the next March, a particular photographer came to take photos of the suiters and met Gladis: Hypercat. Burly yet smiley, and lazy-eyed beneath his glasses, Hyper is a taker of many thousands of photos at conventions. His Furtrack account logs 44,000 photos and is the most prolific photographer on the site. I met Hyper a few years ago, probably at Anthro New England 2025. We’re both photographers carrying large cameras around conventions, a shared connection point. He also took some of the photos presented in this article.

The first event Shutterpaws hosted, in September 2025, at an abandoned building in a Maryland state park. (Photo by Hypercat, via Futrack)

Shutterpaws - A photogenic opportunity

Last September, Hyper started Shutterpaws with the desire to host events at very photogenic spots, not often repeating the same location, so fursuiters can get really good photos out of them. “Our core mission is to host high-quality, themed photoshoots and engaging furry events, providing fantastic opportunities for fursuiters to showcase their characters and for photographers to build their portfolios,” its website states. Gladis was there from the start, but with the FurRide a separate entity.

Hyper wants it to be a middle ground between furmeets and furry conventions, both in size and in funding, as well as hosting events which are low-pressure and low-stakes for furs to attend and participate. These events may cost a little more to attend, but Hyper sees it as offering higher-quality events because of it. “We wanted to do like a ‘step up’ but still make it affordable” to distinguish itself from other free or very low-priced events, he said.

“We just started up doing Shutterpaws to run events in the area that we wanted to see that we really weren’t seeing be ran,” Hyper said. Gladis added, “We started as FurRide, which is one of those free-to-attend events, and then we were like, ‘This would be really cool if we … go golfing. Hey, let’s do photoshoots. Let’s give fursuiters opportunities to get out there, get some cool pictures taken. Help with the [post-con depression] a little bit.”

A few fursuiters in Great Falls Park, on the Virginia border with Maryland, at the third event Shutterpaws hosted. (Photo by Hypercat, via Furtrack)

A blooming merger

Sylox was not equipped for running the growing Paws + Petals solo, even with some help here and there, including Gladis. “I was a one man show running an event that had 150 attendees in 2025, there were a lot of issues that I couldn't address by myself,” he told me. Late last year, Hyper approached Sylox offering help in running the walk.

For Shutterpaws, their events grew in attendance steadily. At first, Hyper began advertising the meets in local furry Telegram channels. The first event, in North Point State Park, in Maryland, around 10 people came. Over time, as more people came to them, Shutterpaws began to have the resources to put on more complex events with walkie-talkies, cases of water bottles, and wagons.

This partnership with FurUp meant that Shutterpaws raised money, bought supplies, and printed badges for Paws + Petals. It also collaborated with DC Fur Meets to align its bar meet for an afterparty in the evening.

By the time of Paws + Petals “265 was the official number leaving the meet spot, [but] I’m sure a lot more people did join after,” Hyper told me, estimating that over 300 furs showed. Around 10 people volunteered to help out that day.

Many lessons were learned from last year’s cherry blossoms, which was during peak bloom. One of them was that cell service was spotty with all of the hundreds of thousands of people who descend to the National Mall. “People got [split] off and they couldn’t figure out where we were because nobody could send messages to each other on Telegram,” Gladis told me. The answer? Get people to save the image of the route on their phones.

This year required more planning and advance notice for furs who want to come from afar. They also wanted to plan around other conventions. “There was only one weekend where it really made sense to host the event,” Gladis said. But because of the cold snap that affected the northeast, that delayed the bloom, and they couldn’t just change the date.

The route was planned around two weeks before the event, and it had to contend with construction, stairs, and parking, Gladis told me. Starting at Maryland Ave Linear Park, it went to the Tidal Basin and to the Washington Monument.

Park police came up to the group and asked questions, saying that they should have a permit, according to Gladis, and they didn’t stay for long at the request. Both Gladis and Sylox said the police were nice and understanding, though. Afterwards, the group went to Pitcher’s, a D.C. bar that has been hosting DC Fur Meet’s monthly bar events, and that month’s date had been aligned to coincide.

Tiptoeing through the Tulips

I couldn’t attend the big cherry blossom walk, but I resolved to go to one of their following events. As it so happened, they were doing another flower-centric event when I was free. Over Easter weekend, I traveled down to Maryland to see Shutterpaws’ next event, held at a place called Montpelier Farms. This was announced on short notice, as the timing of the blooming tulips, which we were here to see, is as unpredictable as the cherry blossoms.

Shutterpaws’ events have been held in proximity to D.C. and Baltimore, the cities closest to where three of the organizers live. Like the NYC FurMeets organization, whose keynote event is their monthly FurWalks, each one of Shutterpaws’ events are organized primarily by only some of the leadership so that more events can happen. “You build a team that has good synergy to all these different things so you don’t have to focus on doing everything,” Slyox said.

Furs started arriving at 9:30 AM, parking their cars in a grass lot. It was a fraction of the crowd that attended Paws + Petals; two dozen showed, all either in fursuit or taking photos. A few wore their full-body fursuits, keeping them on until it got to the day’s peak temperature of 85ºF. When one took off his head at one point, he was perspiring heavily, yet assured he was fine.

A small group of fursuiters and photographers went to Montpelier Farms in Maryland to take photos amid rows of blooming tulips. (Eberra Wolf/Flayrah)

Behind the cameras

Like all Shutterpaws’ events to cast fursuiters in photogenic scenes, this one put them amongst a dozen rows of colorful flowers so that their photo can be taken. And Hyper isn’t the only photographer who comes to these events. YellyXP is another fur who takes tens of thousands of high-quality photos at conventions and at smaller events. I had seen his photos on Furtrack, but had never met the guy until Hyper called for his attention that day.

My high school best friend, who I’d describe as furry-adjacent, tagged along with me. They enjoyed the outing—it was the first furry thing they’d been to, though they also had attended anime and nerdy conventions in and around D.C., like Katsucon and MAGFest. Praising the furs who showed up at the outing, my friend told me afterwards that they smelled good or not at all despite fursuiting in such heat—in contrast to conventions they’d attended, where whiffs of unwashed bodies is not uncommon in even air-conditioned spaces.

With my camera, notebook and pen, I look slightly out of place at furry events I cover. Hyper introduced me to a bunch of people, and informed them of why I was there. A few times during the two hours at Montpelier, he joked about trying to avoid being written up in an exposé in Dogpatch Press or scandalous stories shared in a Google Doc. While I have been a guest writer for Dogpatch Press, my primary home is on Flayrah. It would be the end of Shutterpaws, he jokingly lamented, if someone suffered heatstroke at the event while I was there.

Nothing of the sort happened; enough water was supplied, and the fursuiters took breaks to cool down. Those in fursuits were nonetheless resilient in the sun and heat. Some seemed to spend a whole hour without taking their whole fursuit off.

For an hour and a half, I watched as photographers took photos of the fursuiters, who were posing between rows of tulips, on a wooden train, or on a slide. It felt somewhat rehearsed, probably because it was pretty explicit that the photographers were there to match themselves up with ready fursuiters, and fursuiters were there to pose themselves.

Sylox, the wolf who began Paws + Petals, seemed to be a favorite of the kids who came. In his blue reindeer fursuit, my friend and I overheard very young kids, in awe of what they were seeing, exclaim, “Reindeer!” The suiters interacted with the kids who were brave enough to say hi. Of the exchanges I saw, they were all positive. Parents were encouraging and kind. The friend who I took along commented on this, praising these from the perspective of a young-child counselor.

Sylox, wearing his blue reindeer fursuit at Montpelier Farms. He began organizing formal events in 2022 to walk around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., viewing the cherry blossoms with other furries. (Eberra Wolf/Flayrah)

Future of the photography group

Shutterpaws is to keep going, including with a Baltimore Pride event, which they expect a lot of furs to show up to. The FurRide will probably be held once, later this year, due to the effort in securing permitting. And there are several larger ideas they want to execute in the future. The team also hopes to become recognized as a nonprofit by the IRS, which they hope will open up more doors to them, or at least shrink the obstacles by the mere presence of a nonprofit, like interacting with the National Park Service. Hyper is the president; a brown-and-yellow fox named Yivishta is the vice president; Hyper's partner, Rory, is the secretary; and Gladis is treasurer.

Venues have asked to have them back, Gladis told me, but the team doesn’t want to do a lot of repeats, or at least space them six months to a year apart. Some of it has to do with the focus on experiences, and some has to do with novelty. “There’s only so many times you can go to the same museum,” he said. “There’s only so many times you can get pictures in front of the same park or the same buildings.”

They also want to expand into Virginia, eventually, but they don’t want to have their events too much ground too quickly as to strain themselves or their relationships with venues.

Earlier this year, Gladis’ FurRide was folded into the Shutterpaws portfolio of events. The FurRide is a good fit for the group, in that it is happening once or twice a year, so as to not become stale. Conversely, Sylox says that Paws + Petals will remain a distinctly FurUp event, but be held in partnership with Shutterpaws. “Really—Sylox—it’s his event. We just help out with logistics on the side,” Gladis said. “That event in particular is getting maybe so big it’s not just a one-man team anymore.”

Shutterpaws isn’t the only organization in the DMV, either. There is the monthly D.C. bar meet at Pitcher’s, organized by DC Fur Meet— a Furries of Maryland group, which has been putting on meets across the state for over a decade— NoVAFurs, which holds events in Northern Virginia. There is also probably more that I don’t know of. Despite their geographic names, each’s area of operations is amorphic and weighted to having events near particular places. There is also a new furry convention to be held next February, at the Gaylord National Resort, called Capital Fur Con.

Though smaller than a con, “Paws + Petals specifically is a beast of an event,” Gladis told me. “It transcends any one of these three partner groups that help make it run.”

Updated 4/29/26: Include mention of vice president Yivishta.