6 Pet Photography Tips
Snapping photos of your friends is as easy as telling them to smize. Getting your pets to prepare for their closeup? Well, that’s a whole different beast. A BarkBox study found that dog owners post about their furry friends up to six times a week, while 11 percent have created an entire profile just for showing them off. And it’s not hard to see why. There’s something immensely gratifying about getting your pup to pout perfectly or your cat to work their best angles. After all, spend no more than five minutes on Instagram and you’ll find pets with exponentially more followers than their owners. The truth is that if we can’t all be social media famous, we may as well live vicariously through our pets? Here, photography tips from the pros.
Find the right location
Dogs perform best on camera if they’re in their natural habitat since they have room to roam, says Bryan O’Neil Hughes, director of product management CC platform and services at Adobe. For portraits, find a simple backdrop that doesn’t distract from the animal. Theron Humphrey, photographer and creator of This Wild Idea says exploring your neighborhood with your pet might just lead you to your new favorite hangout. However, he says snapping away in the comfort of your home adds an authentic and honest layer to the photo, while shedding insight not just into your pet, but the relationship you share with them.
Prevent blur
Use higher shutter speeds of 1/250th of a second or more, or find or create more light. Shoot in front of big windows during the day time (but position yourself between the window and the pet to prevent dark backlight). Fidgeting can easily take a moment from Kodak to blurry, so Bryan says to tire them out first by letting them run around outside and reward good behavior with breaks. Ultimately, you know your pet best. “When you’re photographing animals, it’s about patience. So, if you know your dog is really rambunctious, go for a long run in the park for a couple hours, then come back to shoot when they’re more relaxed, after they’ve eaten, and the energy is down,” says Theron. “Then things will really fall into place. It takes a lot of work to capture and create the great moments.”
Adjust your lens
To accentuate your pet’s nuanced features on a DSLR, be sure to use a shallow depth of field. Macro lenses unearth the most detail in their eyes and hair, Bryan explains, while a telephoto lens makes for a clearer wide shot. But don’t stress about the photography jargon: Theron says “you just kind of need to trust the creative process and start shooting. It’s going to lead somewhere good.”
Invest in a stabilizer
A shaky hand yields a home video camcorder effect, which can distract from the story. For video, you don’t need to shell out big bucks for a tripod — a solid surface or a stabilizer should do (try the Splat by Miggo for $25, which wraps around uneven surfaces). Then, consider any effects that might enhance your special subject. Slow-motion is best for extreme action that lasts as long as a blink (the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus's super slo-mo feature stretches 0.2 seconds of footage into 6 seconds), while hyper-lapse best captures footage taken over the course of several minutes or hours.
Step outside the selfie box
There’s nothing inherently wrong with taking a selfie, but your pet is so much more interesting than that. “With pets, you obviously can’t communicate verbally as directly as you can with human subjects. You really have to see where the animal falls naturally, in its own environment, and then work from those parameters outward,” says Theron. If you don’t have a fellow patient photographer on hand, Bryan says you can always mix up your facial expressions or the way you two interact in a selfie. But to mix up your feed, you can’t serve the same looks each shoot. “Use different ideas, push yourself, and try new things with your images,” he says.
Edit, edit, edit
If at first you don’t succeed, head straight to the app store. We’re not suggesting you FaceTune your pet beyond recognition, but you want to differentiate yourself from every other cat mom saturating your feed. Try Adobe Lightroom for mobile, where you can shoot in raw format using the in-app camera. You want good quality shots to work with, so shoot with the right shutter speed, exposure and aperture. Then, you can always go back and tinker with sharpness and highlights if need be. Filters definitely have a tendency to feel very 2013, but they add to the artistry if you’re not heavy-handed. Bryan uses VSCO and adjusts filters to 4 on a scale of 12.
Related: Why You Shouldn't Buy Pets in Pet Stores
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