Your Result:
Your camera isn't sure what to focus on. Or it's too slow to keep up.
If the eyes aren’t the sharpest thing in the photo, something in your camera settings needs attention. And it’s almost always one of two things.
Where your camera is looking for focus: if you have a wide focus area, your camera is trying to find focus across the whole frame, or wherever they think the most important subject is. Which sounds helpful… until your camera decides the shiny nose in the middle of the photo is more interesting than the eye, or locks onto the background while your dog moves. Telling your camera exactly where to look, and how to update focus for slightly moving subjects, makes an enormous difference.
Whether your shutter speed is fast enough: dogs are living, breathing, constantly shifting creatures. Even when they look still, they’re usually not. They look around, they pant, they are not statues. The shutter speeds that work perfectly for a human portrait will give you a soft, slightly blurry dog more often than you’d think. My minimum shutter speed is 1/400 sec.
One thing to try:
Check where your focus point is set and make sure it’s on the eye. And if your photos are coming out soft, try increasing your shutter speed and see what happens.
Want to go deeper?
Focus modes, focus areas, shutter speed, aperture- camera settings is a whole topic and we’ve barely touched it here. It’s all covered in Starting Point.
Ready to fix this properly?
Most people think they need to learn “magical edits”. In reality, most people need better foundation skills.
Starting Point is the entry tier of The Learning Journey, my membership for pet photographers who want to take photos that actually feel how they imagined them.
It’s not a quick fix or a beginner’s sampler. It’s a curated library of foundation lessons covering the things that make the biggest difference to your photos… in the order that makes sense to learn them.
50 lessons. Around 30 to 40 hours of video content. All the things I wish someone had told me at the beginning.
What's Included in Starting Point?
📸 Capture the Moment
- The Beginning Stage lesson library including the 4 core courses with around 50 lessons and 30 to 40 hours of content:
- Mastering the Foundations
- Light
- Camera Settings
- Beginning Editing.
- Starting Strong: A 5-week guided beginning for new members, so you know exactly where to start and what to focus on first. Recordings included and available!
- Selected event replays: Access to replays of events where the content is relevant and useful for where you are.
💡 Learn, Grow & Connect
- The Inspawration community: The same community as Complete Access members. One space, no hierarchy, genuine peer feedback and connection.
- Monthly challenges: Structured prompts to get you shooting with intention, not just waiting for the perfect moment.
- Edit and Chill sessions: Watch me edit in real time. No performing, no perfection. Just the actual process.
- Critique video access: Watch monthly critique sessions and learn from the feedback given to other members’ work.
All for only €14 per month!
No contracts, no minimum term.
Or… find out more!
