Make Better Pet Photographs
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Our pets are members of our families and making images of our loved pets is both fun and the ability to create memories. Making great pet photographs is not hard and these tips will help you achieve those goals producing photos that will make great prints, wallpapers and for sharing.
Best Practices for Better Pet Photographs
Eye Level
This sounds kind of obvious but it’s the key mistake most often made. This may require you to get down on the ground, or to elevate your pet to a comfortable height for you with a table or some other riser method. Always avoid shooting down on a pet.
Even Lighting
Pet’s have distinguishing characteristics in the their fur, feathers or scales. To bring this detail out, you need even lighting across the entire pet and it must not be harsh light. If you are photographing outdoors, choose an overcast day without harsh shadows. If you are photographing indoors, place the pet close to a large window source and use a large reflector opposite the window to fill the shadows.
If you want to supplement the light, a flash duration is very short and generally will not disturb a pet, and certainly will not harm one. If you are using continuous lighting, you will need a lot of it because while it looks bright to you, it’s really not that bright. If you are using flash, you will get lots of depth of field and can use the flash’s TTL mode for a great exposure quickly.
Whenever using supplemental light, a silver umbrella is a perfect inexpensive choice and then just add a reflector opposite the umbrella. Always position your light to achieve some form of catchlight in the eye.
Exposure Management
As with any photogaph, for the best result, shoot in RAW mode. I recommend as a generalization to always overexpose at least one stop. You can always reduce the overall exposure in post, but doing this puts detail in the shadows that would otherwise be lost.
You also want to consider the nature of the pet’s covering. If black fur, feathers or scales, your meter will tend to overexpose if your pet fills the frame as it should. If the fur, feathers or scales are white, your meter will tend to underexpose if your pet fills the frame as it should.
Most cameras today offer auto-bracketing so as a general practice, I recommend three shots at -1 ⅔, 0 and + 1 ⅔ stops. This gives you some options when it comes to editing.
Look for Gesture
The face of the pet, or a particular action is critical to a successful image and what you want to look for is called gesture. It could be your dog with its mouth open, maybe holding a toy. It could be your cat playing with a cat toy, or high on catnip. If your pet is a reptile, make the images when your pet is most active, often just before feeding time.
Fill The Frame
Your pet is your only subject so always fill the frame. You may choose to use a telephoto lens to allow you to do this without crowding your pet. If the background is really busy, use your lens to crop most of it out. You can certainly include some background for context but never to the extent that it draws attention away from your primary subject.
Be Patient
Many pets find the noise of a camera or a bright light to be disconcerting, so prep your pet with the sound of the camera shutter or a flash firing over a period of days so when it comes time to make your pet photographs, your pet does not freak out. Also just like humans, pets can have off days, and may just not be in the mood to be photographed.
Using treats and toys can attract attention in the pet to look at the camera, but there will be times, particularly with cats, where you are just a nuisance. Try again at another time.
Camera Settings
For pets. I recommend the following settings to start
Aperture preferred mode with an aperture that gives you just enough depth of field and no more
A shutter speed that will prevent camera shake. If using a common zoom lens, I go with 1/250th of a second
Auto ISO allows for automatic changes if the lighting shifts
I use a single spot autofocus and lock on the pet’s nearest eye. Your camera my have animal eye detection and if it does, try that.
For metering, I use the camera default, sometimes called matrix metering because it tends to weigh towards the center but does take the background into account. Remember to compensate if the pet is overly dark (you underexpose) or overly bright (you overexpose) on whatever the meter proposes. I tend to like a burst mode, but only if the pet is acclimated to the noise. This allows me to capture a gesture that often occurs quickly after the first frame is made, but avoid overshooting. Leave your camera white balance setting in AWB. If you want to change the white balance you can do it in editing with ease.
Thanks very much for reading. I hope you find this article helpful.
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