Pet Photography: Pet Portraits Made Even Easier

After reading "Pet Photography: Animal Portraits Made Easy" by Lolaness, I realized that another article needed to be written. Not all pets are well-behaved and not everyone is going to have all day to wait. After working as a pet photographer for a few months, I learned quite a few tricks. Other tricks I learned came from photographing pets at rescues and shelters. Whether you're taking photos of your pets, someone else's pet, or you're volunteering to take photos of shelter pets, this article will help you.

First Things First

Make sure your batteries are charged! This is by far the most frustrating thing to forget. You're at the shelter, you've got the pet out of the kennel, and then the "low battery" warning comes on. If you're going to need to take a lot of photos, it's a good idea to buy an extra battery.

Photography Basics Still Apply

Don't forget things like good lighting and good cropping when taking photos of your pet. If you're relying on outdoor lighting, morning lighting tends to work best. Shade can often have advantages over bright sunlight as well. Your pet does not necessarily need to be in the center of the photo, but be careful of bad cropping. It's a horrible feeling when you realize if only you would have had better cropping, you'd have a great photo. If your camera takes nice large photos, you may not want to worry as much about cropping, and just crop the photos later in PhotoShop. This is often a better idea when photographing particularly unpredictable pets.

Before You Start

Set up everything before the pet is there. If you're going to use a backdrop, put one up. If you're not using a backdrop, decide what you want in the background (or roughly the area you're going to use to take photos in). Set up any props before you bring the animal out.

Before taking photos of your pet, make sure that your pet is not already overly hyper. Did you just come home from work? Has the dog been in a crate all day? If you need to get your dog a bit tired first, a long walk can work wonders. Other pets can first be worn out too by playing.

When you're ready to take photos of your pet, brush them, make sure they look nice and neat, and get them relaxed. Make sure this is not going to be a stressful experience for your pet.

Things to Watch Out For

In pet photos, there are a couple things that are just more problematic with pets than people (or still-lifes). Many pets are not going to stay still for the photo. While you may need to move around quite a bit to get some good photos, it is important to remember to keep the camera still while taking photos. The animal may contribute to enough blurry photos, you don't want to add extra blurry photos from being unsteady. The easiest way to solve this problem is to get a good tripod. Sure, you can be steady without one, but it's just easier to use a tripod sometimes. Also, if you really want to make sure you don't move the camera, buy a remote. You can control many digital cameras by a remote now.

In addition to the problem of blurry pet photos, I think the problem people are most afraid of is red-eye (or blue-eyes, green-eyes, etc. in pets). When I used to do pet photography, many owners would tell me that their pet always had red eyes in photos. There are a couple ways that I quickly learned to fix this problem. If red eyes occur, you can edit the eyes in PhotoShop. Don't use black to fill in the red section, instead you'll want to grab the color of the pupil from a good section of the photo. If this isn't possible, dark brown works good as a fill in (use a very dark brown). If highlights are present in the eye, do not disturb the highlights! Taking out the highlights often results in an unnatural looking photo. If the highlights are reddish, you can re-do them in the same location, with a white brush with a blurry border. Let's say you don't have access to PhotoShop though (or refuse to learn how to use it). Many digital cameras also have a very adjustable flash. Play around with your flash to see what works well. I found that using the on-camera flash at a very low level worked well when coupled with a strobe (or two) set at angles not directly pointing at the pet's eyes. With this method, I rarely got red eyes. But let's say that you don't have an adjustable flash either or access to any lighting equipment. In this case, I'd recommend that you stick to outdoor photos if red eyes bother you. It's not a bad thing to have to use outdoor lighting. I used outdoor lighting only for years when volunteering with rescues to take photos of their adoptable animals.

No Need to Sit

Some pets don't like to sit, so don't make them. I've taken many cute photos of standing pets, pets lying down, or even pets playing. There are a variety of cute positions that will look great. If your pet wants to stay standing, don't freak out. After all, it gets kind of boring to take photos of nothing but sitting pets.

When Pets Won't Behave

Your pet may be an angel that you trained perfectly. He will sit on command gladly, let you move him around any which way you want, and even do cute expressions too. But not all pets are going to be easy to photograph.

The biggest problem I had when doing pet photography, was the pets who just wouldn't stay. There are a couple of ways to fix this problem. If you put the pet on a table, some won't jump off. This will at least keep them on the backdrop. However, I was working without an assistant and didn't want to risk having pets jump off the table and breaking their bones. I found that by far the easiest way to make pets stay, was to keep their leashes on them. If you are taking photos of someone else's pet and the owner is there, have them hold the leash and stand at least a foot or two away from their pet. When the pet is still, the leash should be held so that it is not draping onto the pet's fur. Removing the leash later in PhotoShop is going to be much easier if you only need to wipe the leash off the backdrop with the clone stamp, rather than also edit it off the fur. If the owner was standing a bit too close, they can also be taken out of the photo later. If you can't remove a leash in PhotoShop because you don't have access to PhotoShop, there are also ways to make the leash look like it was meant to be part of the photo. I once took a photo of a doberman where the dog was barking and the leash was pulled tight with the owner out of the picture. It actually looked like I wanted the leash to be in the photo.

Another thing is often just knowing the species. If someone brought in a snake, letting the snake wrap around something would often keep them where you wanted them. When taking photos of cats, getting them to look often only requires some type of toy on a string. If you're taking photos of guinea pigs, rubbing their chin first can get them to look up at you.

When pets don't want to look at the camera, try squeaky toys and whistling if you can. Remember that profiles can also make nice photos, and try taking a few shots with the pet not looking your way. You may end up with some photos that you really like.

In a shelter environment, you will often encounter scared pets. Don't be afraid to take the photo with the pet in their kennel rather than taking them out. Even if you have to show bars in the photo, they can often add to the emotional appeal. When I'm browsing shelter websites and see a photo of a sad looking dog sitting behind bars (or jumping up on the bars trying to get out), it can make me wish I could go adopt that one. And when taking photos of shelter pets, that is generally exactly the response you want. You are probably taking photos to help the pets get adopted, not to make them look like models.

Have Fun

The most important thing to remember, is that you want both you and the animal to have as much fun as possible. You don't want this to be a stressful experience that will cause them to run from the camera in the future. You want to have fun, get some great photos, and create more memories in the future.