Pet Photography 101: Tips for taking better photos of your dog or cat

To create what is known as a “hero shot” (so named because it often makes the subject look more majestic), all you need to do is lower your perspective so that you are a bit lower than the pet’s eye level (how low will depend on the pet, and experimentation is key). In this photo of a Weimaraner, photographed in a park on a partly cloudy day at about 1 p.m. in late December, his owner was right next to him when I took the shot. I cropped it to a square because I liked that look much more in this case. That’s a bonus tip that will be covered again in Tip 20 and other places throughout the book—use cropping to your advantage!

If you have a distinctive-looking picture window or French doors, try including them in your photos. If the light is not much brighter outside compared with inside, you can get a very nice overall look without losing detail on your subject. For this photo of a client’s Dalmatian, which I captured handheld at a beautiful home on a snowy day with a wide-angle lens, I just followed the dog around until she stopped to take a peek outside. I took at least 10 photos as she adjusted her tail here and there. Within just a few moments, she was on to her next adventure, which is common with pets, so it’s important to be prepared and shoot a lot when the moment is right.

One of the best times to photograph furry friends and other family members is while they are relaxing on a sofa, the floor, or a bed. The window light found in many bedrooms and living rooms is beautiful. For this photo of a client and her four dogs (three Maltese and a mixed breed), the sun was streaming through a nearly wall-sized window (camera left), and provided most of the light. Some warm lightbulbs in the bedroom provided the rest of the light, and added to the warm look and feel. I placed my camera on a tripod so that I could focus manually and get the framing I liked. It wasn’t easy to get good expressions on all the dogs in just one photo, so I ended up borrowing from a few images and assembled them in Adobe Photoshop to get the results you see.

Hand-colored black-and-white prints have been popular for over 100 years. The look can be very striking and nostalgic, but you don’t need special paints or a paintbrush to do it. Almost any image editor will allow you to produce great-looking hand-colored images. The key is to use layers or other nondestructive workflow options so that you can revisit the image to increase or decrease saturation, change the overall colors, and adjust the masking if you’ve "painted outside the lines."

Electronic flash has many uses when outside. On the topic of “raccoon eyes,” which can occur when taking photos when the sun is high in the sky, there are a number of ways to avoid the problem. One way is by using fill flash when outdoors. Fill flash can be enabled in several ways: by using the small flash found on many point-and-shoot cameras; by using a DSLR’s pop-up flash; with a detachable, on-camera flash unit; or with an off-camera flash unit. The icon on most point-and-shoot cameras to turn on fill flash is usually a lightning bolt—press the flash button until you see the lightning bolt stay on.

A removable flash unit that sits in your camera’s hot shoe, or an off-camera flash are best for fill flash (or for flash in general when outside). That’s because you can separate your camera lens from the flash, which reduces the chance of red-eye (or green-eye, as is the case with many pets), plus you can create larger catch lights in your subjects’ eyes by using a diffuser over the flash, such as the LumiQuest BigBounce diffuser. An off-camera flash has the added benefit of allowing you to light from any angle.

I photographed this little girl and her Pug on a sunny day at about 1 P.M. in late August. An off-camera compact flash unit (Vivitar 285HV) was placed slightly camera right with a large diffuser about two feet (.6 meters) from the subjects. I used manual mode on the flash and camera to find the right balance between the natural light and flash.