Pet Christmas Photoshoot

So I finally had some personal time in between photographing weddings and covering events to photograph the newest addition to our family for our annual Christmas card. Her name is Jennifer chosen by my husband Bill. I found her or shall I say a co-worker found Jennifer crying loudly under her vehicle at our job. As I was making my way back from classes to work, as I entered the building my co-worker was texting me to hurry and come over to where she is parked, there is a kitten! She said. I thought, "Oh great. I'm not ready for a new addition yet so close to just losing my last cat a few weeks prior. My heart was still broken but I won't turn away a stray. I figured I would get her home and call a few places to see if someone would take her or if maybe a friend on Facebook would take her. Well to make a long story short after a few days we decided to keep her. I'm glad we made the decision and I am sure she is too considering the sudden change in weather. So one of the things my pets have to learn to put up with is my photographing them. Lol! They become my models for some projects.

Photographing Pets 

NOT EASY! 

What you need is a lot of patience and time. One of the secrets I have discovered to photographing pets is wait until they are tired. With cats it's usually an hour or two after they eat. With dogs I found you need to tire them out by playing with them or take them for a long walk. The last thing you want to do is chase around a pet with a camera when they are full of energy. You will be worn out faster than them and it will take you eight hours to get one good shot. Yes, the first time I photographed a pet it took me eight hours and also became a contortionist that same day. Not fun. That's when I decided to take a pet photography workshop and actually assisted the photographer afterwards on a shoot at a local pet store. Now I am armed with some valuable knowledge that I am now sharing with you so you can do it yourself. 

Props! Keep them simple. Too many props spoil the pet pictures. I only add one or two props. Believe it or not you won't even see the other props and the pets get distracted by them. Let the dogs take a picture with their favorite toy on their favorite chair. Photograph them where they are comfortable if you are shooting in a clients home or your own. Make squeaking noises so they tilt their heads and perk their ears when they look at you and be quick about snapping that picture. Also, NO FLASH! Use either mono-lights, not strobes or open all the blinds and turn on the lights if it's too dark. Pets tend to not like flash. Today I used window light and overhead light. I set my white balance to tungsten because there was more of the tungsten than natural light and I wanted my "whites" to be white. You will see what I mean when I post the pics. Also, I shot in "P "or program mode and let the camera control the aperture and shutter speed because I did not want to look away from my subject and start fiddling with my camera missing a shot and I knew I would be moving around the room a lot too. Also used my 50mm f/1.4 prime lens because it's a great portrait lens and the f/stop opens up wide to let in lots of light. I set my ISO to flex between 800 and 1600. I shot these images in my bedroom which although I opened up both blinds and had the overhead lights on, it was an overcast day and a bit dark in the room. I had the camera set to continuous shoot and set the autofocus to "ONE SHOT" instead of AL SERVO which is what I usually photograph kids and pets using but considering I was up close and the pet wasn't moving around too much I was good with my auto focus at the one shot setting. One question I get asked a lot is about where to focus on pets? The eyes or snout?" Personally I think it depends on what the photographer is trying to portray in the photo. Today I wanted sharp eyes. I decided to let the rest be soft focus because she is a kitten. The problem many will face is if your aperture is open too wide and you are photographing a dog the distance between the tip of the nose and the eyes will cause one or the other to be out of focus. Try not opening your aperture so wide and just bump up your iso to let more light in. It will take a few tries but you can get both in focus. 

The lights I am using for special effect is the christmas light necklace that you can get cheap at the dollar store. 

Jennifer was pretty relaxed at this moment so I was able to gently place the miniature gift on her paws.

The christmas light necklace placed next to her.

With a shallow aperture I held the christmas light necklace next to the lens for this effect. 

 Only used two props for the entire shoot. Both from the dollar store. 

This photo is actually going to be her "Thank You" picture card that Jennifer is going to send to all the kind people that helped her mommy to capture her.