How to Photograph Pets

Why It Is Important To Know How To Take Good Pictures Of Your Pet

Here is a picture of our Maxxie, taken in 2002 by a professional photographer.

We ordered pizza one night on my wife’s birthday, and I put my business card inside a “bin”. Next thing you know, $300.00 later with our ‘Free Pictures’ and other pictures, we finally had some family pictures .. me, my wife and Maxxie! Maxxie was the most photogenic of the lot, as if you can’t tell! I call this picture .. “Maxxie – Formal – Smiling”

May 2002 - Hello .. This is another formal picture of me, smiling

Here is a picture of our Sophie, with my current digital camera

I had a reasonable nice camera for taking pictures, but it wasn’t too clear on the detail and on the closeups. So, in 2005 I went out and purchased one of the Olympus Stylus 300 Digital camera’s at Future Shop and started to take pictures. Well, I forgot about those double-flashes the camera does (to prepare or reduce the Red-Eye effect) … and this is the picture I took. I call this picture .. “Sophie – Oops – Yawning”

Believe It Or Not ..

… I try to take pictures every day of our two pet papillon dogs Maxxie and Sophie, and of our cat Zeussie Pussy
Cat .. so I can upload pictures onto our Pet site .. http://PapillonLvr.com/blog/ . Unfortunately, not all of them come out okay and I’ve been either neglecting to put up ANY pictures at all on the site, or I have been posting some nice pictures of Papillon dogs found on Flickr or YouTube.

You can see all the pictures of our pet Papillon dogs over at http://PapillonLvr.com/blog/

So Why Not Learn How To Take Great Pictures Yourself?

Darren Rowse of Digital Photography School writes some great tips on How to Photograph Pets.

Of his Top 10 tips … I like his last tip the best…

10. Catch them Unawares – Posed shots can be fun and effective but one thing I love to do (whether it be with animals or people) is to photograph them candidly paparazzi style. I have very fond memories of stalking a friend’s dog as he played in a back yard one day. I took shots while he dug up flowers, as he buried a bone, as he fell chased a bee around and ask he sat contentedly with his head sticking out of his dog house. The whole time I photographed him he was barely aware of my presence so the shots were very natural without me distracting the dog from his ‘business’.

If you have a camera .. I suggest that you browse the Digital Photography School for many tips and techniques how to get better pictures out of your camera .. so you don’t have to hire a professional to take good pictures of your pets. And .. does it really help? Well, I still have a pretty basic camera, and I’m still a lousy picture taker .. but, it’s not that I don’t recognize a good photo opportunity if I see one!

For instance, if I want to take pictures of Maxxie and Sophie .. all I have to say is .. “Papillon Pictures, Papillon Pictures” .. and, then they stop and pose for me, most likely looking away from the camera and the flash. Using Darren Rowse’s “Paparazzi” style tip .. I sometimes get cool pictures .. like, the following – watching our dogs roll over!

Maxxie puts on a great show and rolls over on command!