Tips for Animal Photography

We all love to take pictures of our pets.. well.. when I say ‘we all’.. I mean.. well, me! I love taking my pups pictures, and actually.. come to think of it, I love taking pictures of other peoples animals as well. (Check out my Flickr site here). I was browsing over at Christy’s Dog Portal and she had the following 4 tips:

Dog Photography Tip 1: Preoccupy Your Pet

For the average dog, photography is simply an impediment to fun. Plus dogs are just as sensitive to humans when you aim a camera at their face.

In order for you to not freak them out, you have to distract them. Throw them the proverbial bone by giving them something to chew on (a tennis ball maybe?) or a dog biscuit. Problem is, they might end up too engrossed in the distraction to pay you any attention. You still need them to look at the camera…

Dog Photography Tip 2: Recapture their Attention

Once they’ve been distracted, it’s time to recall their attention to the camera. Your dog photography instincts may tell you to take it easy but don’t listen! Prepare to take your shot as soon as you can. Set up and frame the animal nicely.

Then whistle the dog to look at you. Or use anything that might make a curious noise (a squeaky toy or a tin lid perhaps). Don’t waste valuable time here, as your dog will soon tire of your antics and you may lose a great chance to catch him off guard.

Dog Photography Tip 3: Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Dogs love sleeping and you might want to take advantage of this opportunity where they are in a fixed position. Your squeaky toy will probably come into play again. Catch their attention with a nice loud noise (but not too loud, you don’t want them completely out of their skin). Then get your shot before they realize the ruse and begin to hate you.

Dog Photography Tip 4: Get an Extra Hand

If things prove to be too much to handle alone, maybe you could ask someone to help you set your dog up. This would be of immense help as you can then focus on framing the picture and attending to your camera instead of trying to stop your dog from licking his private parts.

Make sure your friend is out of frame when you decide to take the picture. This will take some coordination as it’s likely the dog will lose his poise once your friend has moved out of shot. Again, timing is the key.

So there, just a few tips to help you get your dog into a cooperative mood (somewhat!) Dog photography can be hard work but is very rewarding if you pull it off.

These are great tips.. I will add a few more technical tips as I believe that if you have the above mastered and a properly posed pooch, you want to make sure that you get the right settings on your camera!

LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT! This is the #1 important thing in photography. If you don’t have enough light, you can certainly use the flash, but I wouldn’t recommend it, as it creates nasty ‘animal eye’, and that is tough to fix. Basically it’s like Red Eye, but for animals – and I think it’s worse, since the entire eye gets blinded out!
ISO – Iso controls your cameras sensitivity to light. That being said, the lower ISO’s generate more detail, such as 100,200, etc – however the higher ISO levels will brighten things up a bit as well as allow for faster shutter speeds – rule of thumb? Basically use lower levels if your animal is sleeping, and higher when they are running (if you want to freeze the action)
SHUTTER SPEED – personally, I find this very important. I love action shots of my dogs running (see Hunter in action) This particular photo was taken at a shutter speed of 1/500 which isn’t CRAZY fast, but definately as you can see, fast enough to freeze the action quite well. After I was able to crop it, I really enjoyed the photo.