photography tips & advice

Here are some general tips and advice about photographing your animals for a portrait (particularly dogs):

1. Shoot in good lighting conditions (preferably outdoors on a sunny day, otherwise indoors with as much natural light as possible) and avoid using the flash if at all possible. Although this can require a longer exposure, using the flash tends to wash out the picture or result in unnatural contrasts. Most importantly, it often causes bright reflections in the animal's eyes that obliterate a lot of detail. The eyes are probably the most important part of the picture after all!

2. Bear in mind that sometimes more unusual shots can really capture your animal's personality and still make a good source photograph. Take this photograph below for example; although the dog is looking over his shoulder, by rotating and cropping the photo it made a great portrait that the client was very happy with:

3. When photographing dogs, you can try holding a treat out of shot to keep their attention fixed on a single point and/or have someone hold them still (try not to obscure too much of the animal in the process though).

4. The crisper and more detailed the image, the better - blurred photographs are difficult to copy from (unless that's the effect you're looking for!). Also for digital images it's best to shoot on the highest settings, i.e. maximum megapixels and maximum quality/lowest compression (usually called "superfine" or something similar). This preserves as much detail as possible.

5. Get down to the animal's eyeline. This will avoid distorting their features.

6. Remember that I can make subtle changes to the final portrait at your request if the photograph isn't exactly to your liking or you feel it doesn't quite capture your pet's personality. This can include removing collars (or parts of them), changing eyes (the direction they are looking in and such) and other alterations.

And finally, here are some cute puppies to help illustrate some of the do's and don'ts: