A while ago I posted an article about photographing children, now in this opportunity I’d like to write another article about photographing pets. The reason is mainly because both subjects have at least one thing in common, they cannot really be directed to do a certain pose or to smile to the camera, or even just to stand still, hence I think it’ll be interesting to write about it.

Photo By Canuck

In this article I am going to focus on photographing dog and cat since they are very popular pets. Pretty similar to children in terms of photographing, to take a good pet picture it’s best to make them do something interesting and waiting for prime picture-taking opportunities. Says you want to photograph your dog, try to give her a bone to chew or play with. I know there’s a possibility that your dog will be too excited playing and ignore you all together, well here’s another toy comes in such as squeaky toy, surely it’ll draw her attention. Try this, when your dog is playing with the bone, with your camera set to multi-shot feature and ready to shot, squeak the toy behind the camera and start shooting, hopefully she’ll still chewing the bone when she tries to find where the squeak come from.

Just like photographing children technique, always try to shot at the eye level since with pet’s expression mostly in the eyes, and also for the same reason with children, unless you have a llama or a horse as your pet, photographing pet while you are standing will end up in an awkward perpective photo and not really pleasing to see.

Photo By WisDoc

In combination with eye-level shot, also it’s better to get close with your pet during photo session. I know it’s not always easy -if not hard- to get close with pet especially if the pet is not yours, but it’s always worth the effort as you’ll be able to capture more details and personality of your pet. In some cases where getting close is simply not possible, there’s a easy solution, which is equipping your camera with a zoom lens or simply use the zooming feature most cameras dSLR/PnS are equipped with.

Always be aware with the background of your subject. You don’t want to have a photo with distracting background, do you? Sometimes plain solid background works really well, as long as it gives good contrast with your subject. For example, if you have brown colour dog try green background will be great, or says you have a white cat I believe plain red background works like magic.

Photo By jaeger43

Flash almost never give a good result since it creates unwanted green-eyes effect (red-eyes effect on human) to you pet’s eyes. The best result will be an outdoor bright natural light, such as at the park or simply your home backyard. If going outside is not really possible due to so many reasons, you still can get adequate lightning by doing your photo session near big window with plenty of natural light coming from behind or slightly to the side of you as you face your pet. I know it’s basic rule everyone should already know but still worth mentioning, always avoid direct sunlight! you will end up with over bright background and black subject.

As a conclusion to this article, photographing pets is pretty similar to photographing children. Both are very difficult if not impossible to be directed to do a certain pose or expression, hence in order to get good photographs you need some techniques, preparation, props and also patience. Few things you need to be aware of when photographing pets are eye-level shot, close contact with subject, sufficient light - natural light is preferable, avoid using flash, and background. So bring your pet to the park and start shooting!