How to Take Good Dog Photos
In a bit of a departure from my regular dog training theme, I want to give some tips on how to take great photos of dogs. After years of practice on our own dogs and on wildlife, I started turning my lens on other people's dogs at different dog events at Paws 'N Effect about ten years ago.
So I wanted to the the opportunity to share some photography that I'm really proud of and to talk about some tips to make the best of the challenges presented by this kind of work.
Lighting
Indoor lighting isn't typically action-friendly. You may have noticed how hard it is to get a crisp, sharp photo of an indoor subject without a flash, and if you use a flash on a dog, you tend to get really bad red eye—though in dogs, "red eye" tends to be "insane demonic green flashlight beast eye."
So if you’re working without lighting equipment, hat means light is your biggest difficulty. Without going into the technical details too deeply, you’re essentially constrained by two things: shutter speed and light.
Shutter speed is a measurement of how long the camera's sensor is exposed to the image. You want it to be fast, since dogs are constantly moving. A fast shutter speed will capture motion crisply. A slower one will work for a still subject, but will create a blur if the subject is moving.
But, while a fast shutter speed is desirable, it means that light doesn't have as much time to bounce off the subject and hit the camera's sensor. That means that if you just crank your shutter speed up really high, the image will come out dark and underexposed.
And, the more light that hits the sensor, the richer and more vibrant the image can be. Photos that don't have quite enough light tend to have a problem called "noise," even if they're not underexposed and dark.
There are many other factors involved, but that's the basic compromise you’re faced with: if the shutter is too slow, the dog will be blurry, but if it's too fast, the photo won't be as saturated and have the rich gradations of light and color you want, particularly when shooting dogs, which always have fascinating coat color and texture.
Dogs with Dark or Black Fur
There isn't much that's more difficult in dog photography than shooting a black dog in mediocre lighting. That's why I went over by a window at the training center and stood with the light coming over my shoulder to get this shot. My camera and lens combo simply does not pull in enough light to take a nice photo of a black dog under the fluorescent lights of the training center, but with the addition of a little more natural light, I can keep him from being a dark blob or a blurry mess.
So if you've noticed that photos of your black dog leave him as a black hole in your photo, your problem is that not enough light has bounced off him and made it to your camera's sensor. In order to get the shine of his coat, you need a ton of light. Sometimes that means the background gets overexposed, but the dog will come out better, which is what's important. If you can’t seem to get a good shot indoors, try going outside. If you’re using an iPhone, you can tap the important part of the image you’re about to take (like your dog’s face), which tells the phone to calibrate to that spot instead of to the whole field of view, meaning you’re more likely to get a good exposure. These photos were taken with a much more serious camera, but I used a similar process to get the exposure right for this dog’s lustrous black fur.
Personality
Beyond lighting, another issue is trying to capture an expression that speaks to the personality of the dog. Without knowing the dog, that's not always so easy, but thanks to the digital format, I can snap a relatively high number of exposures in a row to try to get a bunch of different expressions.
I find that when dogs look at their handlers, I often get great stuff. There are looks of focus, happiness, and even adoration when a dog connects with her human, and they can make for some amazing shots.
You also want to think about catchlights when you’re trying to give personality to a shot of a dog. Unlike red eye, which is when light reflects off the retina at the back of the eye, a catchlight is the reflection of a light source off the surface of the eye. It gives eyes a sparkle that adds personality. Having a light source over your shoulder helps, but sometimes you have to rotate around and experiment to see what you can get.
Especially for a dog with a dark iris that fills most of the visible part of their eye, a catchlight in at least one eye can be the difference between a perfect shot and a mediocre one.
You don’t have to catch a catchlight for a dog photo to be good, but only one shot in this whole set lacks it, so I find it really helps with my own work.
Get Down to Their Level
You also tend to get a somewhat better profile of a dog by getting down toward their level. You don’t have to get down all the way, but shooting down toward them from slightly above their head height can work nicely, as can shooting from even with their head, but shooting from way above is a challenge unless the dog has cocked his head all the way up himself.
Millie is also about six inches high, so I'm actually crouched almost down to the ground for this shot, even though it's angled from slightly above her.
Some other great shots happen when the dog is looking at the camera, so I'm not above borrowing a treat from the owner or making a whole series of ridiculous sounds to get an inquisitive, head-on look from a dog.
Again, this is a very small dog, so I'm crouched very, very low so I'm only shooting from a little higher than her head.
For this shot of this Corgi, I'm actually almost lying down in the grass from about 40 feet away with a zoom lens.