More often than not, I tend to do bird and wild life photography. However, with the distinct lack of birds around right now, I’ve made it a point to work on my pet photography skills. Shooting wildlife and birds is hard. But I think shooting dogs and cats is even worse! In general animals of any kind are unpredictable, and that presents its own challenges. At least as far as pets go, you can motivate them to be slightly less unpredictable by using their favorite toys or treats as motivation.
My Black Lab Mars is one of those very food motivated dogs. He will sit still for just about any kind of treat, and that helps me out so much! I will say however, being an all black dog does make the editing aspect a little more difficult. Blacks can have so many different colored undertones such as purple or blue, and they can really present depending on lightning. I like to try and keep the black tones very neutral and deep, without bringing up those colors and also keep the color from looking washed out. I found that bright light outside, while not being in direct sunlight seems to work the best.
Black Labrador, Mars
You can see what I mean with this set of photos here. The photo on the left has a bit more blue undertones than I would prefer, and the far right has a bit of purple.
Border Collie Basset Hound mix, Hog
Here’s some examples of why I prefer bright, indirect lighting. The sun does a great job bringing out the color of her fur, but it’s also causing her to squint, and creating dark shadows across different part of her body and face. While the squinting cannot be fixed, some of the shadowing can be lightly adjusted and bring some of the darkness out like I did with her face in the center photo.
Pit bull mix, Juno
Now cats are a whole different ball game. I absolutely LOVE photographing feral, stray, and farm cats. They have a ruggedness to them that really makes for beautiful photographs.
I have two indoor cats. They tend to be very afraid of going outside, so indoor photography has some challenge to it. Even with lights on, unless you have the settings of your camera adjusted just so, and a perfectly still cat (yeah right) the photos can still turn out fairly dark. I don’t have any mobile lighting at the moment so I just have to work with what I have. I love the look of black background, and I need to invest in a small backdrop set up to really achieve this look in a better way, along with those mobile studio lights. But the black just really makes the kitties pop and look like a professional head shot sort of portrait.
Jelly and Puma
Do you like pet photography? I’m going to keep working on my skill with it and hope to make it a service I can offer to people. I think it‘s a great way to commemorate your best friend! I’d love to photograph other pets beside just cats and dogs as well. Horses, rabbits, birds, and even reptiles and amphibians. I love them all !
