Photographing Pets - a how to guide

Word and Pictures Peter Bargh ePHOTOzine

Animals are a nightmare to get to do what you want. You can, of course, spend time training them to obey, but the fact of life is most of us have a pet as a companion and training is the last thing on the agenda. So when you come to photograph your pet there are a few tips that will help you get better photos.
   A pet, is just like any other subject in terms of photography technique - composition, focusing and exposure being the three main areas to perfect, the fourth, and most problematic, is getting subject participation.
   Try pointing your camera at a cat or dog. Their inquisitive nature will drive them to come right up to the camera and sniff the lens. You move away and they'll follow. Sit them in a convenient spot and they'll bounce back. Frustrated? You will be!

By the time this photo was taken Fluff had become tired of being plonked back two feet from the camera. Trouble is he now looks bored and probably can't understand why I didn't want him to nuzzle the camera lens.

Tip 1 give the dog a bone
Give your pet something to take their mind of the camera. The only problem now is they will be chewing or playing around and are highly unlikely to look at you, let alone the camera.

Tip 2 Squeaky toy
Use a squeaky toy to attract their attention. Place it behind the camera so they look in the right direction. The bone they're chewing will be more interesting, but at least they will look up long enough for you to fire the shutter. (act quickly and make sure you get the shot in the first or second take). They'll soon get wise or bored of your attention seeking activity.

Tip 3 Wait until the right moment
Cats and dogs are easy to catch out when they are sleepy. Time for the squeaky toy again. Just as they're nodding off squeak the toy and you'll get a moment of alertness shot and relax. 

Tip 4 Get help
You could ask someone else to entertain the pet while you walk around taking the photos. Try to keep the person out of the frame and the shots will be more natural. Digital photographers could get the person to hold the animal in place and then erase them later, this is time consuming but good if you want great pet portraits.

A friend wanted me to take photos of her dog. Black & white portrait please. The dog would not sit up tidily so I asked her to encourage him with a chew. He quickly exited the frame. The room was small so you would have no chance of getting a decent background set up so we went for a standard room shot and this can be diffused in Photoshop or, with careful selection, replaced with a studio style background. Not an easy challenge but we got there in the end. Two hours of frustration!

Charley was a different story. All he wanted was his favourite been bag and he was so soft you could move his paws and set him up just how you wanted. All we had to do then is get the owner to move around speaking to him. His eyes followed and we took head on and looking to the side shots. Both work equally well.

Exposure issues
Take care when using transparency film, especially if you fill the frame with a dark or light animal. A pet with a white coat will look dull when photographed using the camera's meter reading. Open up a stop to ensure the whites come out white. Similarly a black dog or cat will look grey unless one stop less exposure is selected. There's no need to compensate when using print film though.
Also watch out for bright backgrounds that could affect the meter reading. Try to take the shot with a neutral background that isn't distracting and, like people photography, avoid trees and telegraph poles growing out of heads.
   The previous shot of the cat Fluff is a good example of exposure problems - he's black with a small amount of white. The multi pattern meter reading suggested 1/125sec at f/8. A spot reading from the white chest suggested 1/250sec at f/16 and a meter reading from the shadow area was 1/60sec at f/8. I settled on 1/25sec at f/11 which is a fair compromise in losing some shadow detail and a slight overexposure on the highlight, but overall makes the cat blacker than the suggested exposure would have done.
 
Try using a slow shutter speed with flash and panning with the animal as it moves to create abstract slow sync flash shots and a sense of action. Use flash to freeze the animal in action. A dog jumping into the air can be frozen in space with flash. Follow the dog through its tracks and fire the shutter when its feet are off the ground. Again have a friend help encourage the dog to do tricks while you move around and capture the magic.

Focusing
As with people photography, focus on the eyes for the attention grabbing shots but don't forget a dog with a long snout will need more depth of field when shooting close up to prevent the tip of the nose being out of focus. Take your shots using a small aperture to avoid this or shoot when their head is turned to one side.

Flash
Humans are not the only ones who suffer from devilish looking eyes when flash is used. Pets eyes appear bright green when flash has reflected and can be removed on prints by using a special touch up pen. Digital photographers can use the selection tools and colour saturation to banish the glaring colour.

Here's what happens when you use flash on a cat, the same will happen to dogs too. Startled look and green pupils. 

Small pets
Let's not forget our small friends hamsters guinea pigs and mice - all cage based and eager to burry themselves in straw. But also happy to spin around on a wheel or sniff out the latest adventures. The main problem here is A) getting close enough and B) avoiding a picture framed with bars. A good option is to photograph the creature in someone's hand, which gets over the cage problem. Then you need a lens that will go close enough so you can fill the frame with the animal. Most zooms lenses have a macro mode but if you can't go close you can buy a close up filter to screw on the front of any camera that has a filter thread on its lens. A +3 will help fill the frame the smaller rodents such as mice, while a +1 is perfect for guinea pigs and such like. 
If you don't trust the hand approach move really close to the cage and use a wider aperture to throw the bars out of focus. Or shoot through the cage with the door open. Try experimenting with slow speeds on a hamster running on a wheel you may be able to get the legs blurred and the head sharp of you're lucky giving a great sense of movement. A shutter speed of around 1/8th sec should be about right.

Fish
If you have fish in a tank you need to move up close to the glass to avoid reflections and use the natural light to take the photo. In daylight the shots will come out okay but shoot under the light used to illuminate the tank and you'll get a colour cast. If you use a fluorescent tube attach a FLD filter on front and if it's a tungsten light use a blue 80 series filter. If you have to step back from the tank to photograph the fish from a distance you will get reflections from the glass. In such cases a polarising filter will help prevent reflections. Attach it to the camera and rotate until the reflections are minimised and then take the photo. You may find shooting from an angle to the glass will work best.
   Fish in outdoor ponds can benefit from the use of a polariser too. Take them when they are near to the surface - feeding time is ideal, and use the polariser to kill the reflections. Shoot from an angle to allow some depth to the fish.
Even in summer the darkness of the water will make the shutter speed quite slow so shoot when the fish are still and hold the camera very steady to prevent camera shake.  

Using a polariser will kill reflections and let you shoot through water to see the fish clearly. But watch out for slow shutter speeds.