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Sitting

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Our Models Poses Sitting

Sit is one of the most simple poses as most dogs learn this as a puppy, can stay in a sit for a relatively long time without stress, and can do it whether they’re young or old. 

Overweight dogs, small dogs, or especially knobbly or awkward dogs may not look their best in a sit. Of course, awkward puppies being awkward may be worth capturing in a sit as this is part of their personality! Just look critically at whether the sit is the best pose for your dog and the story you are telling.

In general, though, sitting poses are pretty safe and it may take a little bit more creativity from us in order to make them more interesting and dynamic, to tell more of a story, or to show more of the dog’s personality. If we plonk a dog down front and centre and have it looking at the camera, it is simply a dog sitting and looking at the camera. What does it tell us about the dog?
That this is a nice dog who can sit.
What story does it tell us?
None.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing! 

Owners often like the simplicity and connection of a sitting, looking down the camera kind of photo. If you’re working with owners, it would be worth doing a questionnaire before the shoot to find out if they have any special wishes, and which photos they most want. Many owners prefer photos where the dog is looking at the camera for the connection, and because their dog sitting is a familiar pose associated with giving him a treat, or stroking his head, sit feels comfortable and familiar to dog owners. So, if you’re doing a shoot for a client, do include some normal sitting poses in your variations.

But, if we’re doing photos for us, want to be more artistic, tell a story or show something of the dog’s personality, we have to be smart about how we use a sitting pose.

Square sitting poses may show the strength or power of a dog (think of a malinois sitting square and staring down the camera), or the endearing eagerness of him (think Loki with a leaf). We can sit a dog sideways to us and have him looking into a shaft of light. 

Curved sitting poses can tell even more stories by bringing movement and flow to our images.

This isn’t to say you must ALWAYS use curved poses, and in fact they are quite difficult to achieve in a sit! Have a look at the examples below, beginning with static poses then moving into more dynamic poses, and see if you can analyse what different moods and feelings, stories or personalities are shown in each based on the pose.

You’ll see pretty quickly here that I don’t really do many sitting poses!
There is a reason why I don't take many sitting photos of Journey
Neutral/grey overcast day light
Clearly warm/golden light

Normal sits are an excellent option for when you have two dogs in the photo, as it’s easy to line them up close to one another and have them stay still in position. Two dogs sitting next to one another probably feels more natural than two dogs lying next to each other. Depending on the relationship between the dogs, they may feel more comfortable sitting next to each other than lying or standing, as they are probably often expected to sit next to one another in their day to day lives.

It also works well with dog and owner poses, to have the dog sitting beside the person.

Things don’t always go to plan, especially with puppies. Just roll with it.

Sitting can be an interesting way to make use of levels and height, as seen in the group shot above. Having the smaller dog sit on the stump, gives him a more upright pose than if he’d been standing. Because the other two dogs are on a diagonal angle, he would have looked strange to have been totally horizontal. 

You can play around with the levels of different sized dogs. For example, a big dog sitting with a smaller dog sitting between his front paws. 


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Portrait or Landscape Orientation

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Focus on Foundations Composition Basics Portrait or Landscape Orientation

One thing I noticed very early on after opening the Learning Community, was a high number of photos being taken in portrait orientation. Let’s have a look at what will be best for your photography, and when you might want to choose one over the other. 

Table of Contents

Portrait Orientation

There seems to be a growing trend toward using portrait orientation (or perhaps it’s always been there, and carried over from human photography?). The main reason people usually give me for shooting in portrait orientation is that they were told to do it, because it works better on Instagram.

The question I want to ask you though is:

Are we creating photos for Instagram? Or are we creating artful photographs that we/our clients love?

Of course we can do both! I would like to think that I do both! However, one look at my feed and you’ll realise pretty quickly that 98% of my photos are in landscape orientation (about 7:5 ratio). And yet, I get a high number of likes, have a reasonable number of followers (23k at the time of writing), a pretty engaged supporter base, and seem to be doing pretty well over there.

Why? Because I can create powerful, dynamic images better if they’re in landscape orientation. 

Which isn’t to say you should never take photos in portrait orientation. Here are some reasons you may want to consider it:

  • Your scene is tall. Imagine a dog standing in front of a sky-scraper, or tall tree, and you want to show the height and length of the thing
  • You are creating a portrait which shows the tall power of the dog. Imagine a malinois sitting square, facing directly at the camera. The photo is about his power and height. Even this, I would argue, could be better done in landscape orientation
  • Dog and owner photos CAN work better in portrait orientation
  • Looking down from above photos can work better in portrait orientation
  • Photos with the dog directly facing the camera, straight on, with something interesting above and/or below them, that needs the height to make an impact.
Have a look at the example gallery below and see what you notice about the images. 
This image is one where it did not need any context. To have anything more would have taken away from the simplicity and emotion.
This photo was all about the eyes.
Dog & Owner
Looking down from above
Flowers overhead
Tunnel effect
Dog & Owner

There are about three there where I “broke the rules” by having the dog looking to the side. In Loki wearing a beanie, I wanted to show his height in beanie and scarf, there was no need for anything else to be in the scene. 

In Journey looking to the left, his gaze is directed upward, toward the sun. He is quite close to the edge of the frame, so still has plenty of negative space to the left. He was “something to look at” so his gaze doesn’t feel squashed in by the frame.

In the puppy with the sparkly magic, again, she is on the very edge of the frame, is looking up and to the side, and has “something to look at”. That photo made much LESS sense without the sparkly magic being added!

Landscape Orientation

It’s pretty clear that I prefer taking my photos in landscape orientation, and there are a few reasons why:

  • More context. We get more of a sense of the scene, the dog’s place within it, the background, the visual interest. It’s a complete scene.
  • More editing options. Because we have more context, we have more to work with in editing. We can make the light come in from the side, or from above. We can lighten some part of the scene, and darken some other part. In portrait orientation, we can work on the dogs, and then we’re pretty much done. Of course there are exceptions, but the options are more limited because we have less space to work with. 
  • More posing/storytelling options. Because we are limited to a narrow window in portrait orientation, we can really only have our dog posed in a straight line away from us. You can see that in the examples above.
    • We can’t really pose our dogs with a curve in their body, which is a way we can produce more dynamic, interesting and storytelling images. See the posing lesson for more on that! A curve in the body in portrait orientation either has the dog cramped in the frame, cuts off parts of them, or they have to be further away. 
  • It makes more sense. Dogs are 4 legged animals, who are naturally horizontal to the earth. Therefore, a horizontal photo makes more sense than a vertical one, in most cases. 
Some examples below, but you’ve seen plenty of landscape orientation photos all over this course. I tried to include a variety here, to show you can do pretty much anything and everything in landscape orientation:
Empty scenes, curves in the body, dogs straight on to the camera, looking to the side, frames and context in the scene, landscapes/scenery, headshots, group shots, action shots, even standing-up tall shots, and shaped light.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, you decide what orientation to take your photos in, what suits your purpose ad your style.

I would rather be making dynamic, beautiful images for me or my clients, which tell a story or make an impact, which I can edit creatively, than to loose those opportunities just because I’m going to post them on Instagram and I MIGHT get more likes by having them portrait orientation.

That being said, you look at any of the “big name” photographers out there, and I can almost guarantee you that the majority of their photos will be in landscape orientation.

If we remember our photography goal again: to captivate our audience and keep them within our photo, then in order to do that, we must surely include elements to keep them there – both the scene, the pose, the light and so on – everything we are discussing in this course! But when we try and reduce a 4-legged horizontal creature to a vertical space, what must we sacrifice in order for that to work?

What is the reason for taking photographs? Why are we choosing to take that photo?

For Instagram?
Or for us?

For likes?
Or for love?

I know which one I would choose, again and again, and again. Have I thought about how well a photo will do on the gram? Have I set up shoots/scenes specifically cos I know IG will enjoy it? Of course! Do I create FOR Instagram? No. Not at all.  After all, Instagram doesn’t pay me. Instagram doesn’t have any hold over what I do. The majority of my students come from Instagram, and the reason they came? Because my work is mine. It is authentic and powerful, it tells stories, it is creative or contemplative or joyful. It is mine. And I will always choose to take beautiful photos over what Instagram will “like” or not like.

Don’t create for Instagram, the way that will “look best” on a phone screen.

Create something beautiful, something wonderful, something with heart and story and purpose. The people who like it, will like it – not because it takes up space as they scroll past, but because it makes them stop a moment and wonder at what you have created.
Create for love. Not for likes. 

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Aperture

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Exposure & Depth of Field Exposure Aperture

Aperture = the pupil/eyeball of your lens.

You know how when it’s dark, your pupil gets bigger to let in more light? And when it’s light, it gets really small? Aperture is controlling how big or small the hole of our shutter is. 

Unlike our eye, however, aperture also affects how soft or sharp the out of focus parts of our image are, eg., how much detail we’ll see either side of our focus area. There is more information on this in the “depth of field/plane of focus” lesson.

Represented as an “f-number” – f/2.8, f/3.5 and so on. You can usually find this number written on the lens. Some zoom lenses will have a variable number (eg., f/3.5-f/5.6) meaning when they are zoomed all the way in, the widest aperture they can use is f/5.6

 

Shot at 1/500 sec, f/1.8, ISO 320

Remember:

  • A small f-stop number = large hole = more light getting in = soft background & foreground.
  • A large f-stop number = smaller hole = less light getting in = more in focus.
  • Therefore: A small f-stop number (f/1.2 up to f/2.8) are perfect for portraits with soft, dreamy backgrounds and less distractions to draw our eye away from the dog. A wide aperture is also very useful to us as it allows us to take photos in the woods, at twilight, or in lower-light conditions, as it allows more light to get into the camera. 
  • My camera is rarely set to anything other than the widest aperture, which on my favourite lenses, is f/1.8
  • A larger f-stop number (f/4.5 to f/22) are for landscapes, or when you want the background to have as much attention as the dog.

One thing to note is that the blurriness of the background CAN be altered by a lot of other factors, not just aperture – make sure you check out the “Depth of Field” lesson for more on this.

1/500 sec, f/7.1 (landscape!), ISO 200

Having the Nose in Focus

It’s worth mentioning this again.

I often see questions in dog photography facebook groups about why the dog’s nose isn’t in focus, or how someone can get the dog’s nose in focus but have the background soft. 

The answer to the first question is: use a narrower aperture.

The answer to the second question is: you probably can’t… unless you move further away.

In my opinion, I don’t want the dog’s nose in focus. I want the viewer’s attention to be on the eyes, and only the eyes. This may be personal preference, but I would argue that most big-name/artistic-style pet photographers (not studio photographers!) take photos at the widest aperture, and don’t care if the nose is out of focus. 

This may be a decision you want to make yourself. I don’t want to compromise my image, and distract my viewers by having plants in the foreground and background in focus just so that the dog’s nose is in focus. Because if you narrow the aperture to get the nose in focus (and the nose can then be a distraction, too), then you allow a lot more detail in the rest of the image too, and this may take our attention away from the subject.

Getting full body images, or photos of a dog side-on to the camera, will mean the nose is likely to be in focus, due to the width of the depth of field (amount of the photo in focus.). If you’re wanting to enter photos into print competitions, having the nose in focus MAY be important for you! 

So your options are: move back/further away from your dog, make your aperture narrower (bigger number), have the dog side-on to the camera. 

There’s a reason we see a lot of photos for print/photography competitions that are stricter with noses in focus, where they’re full-body shots and the background has been heavily hazed out. Because otherwise? There would be a lot more detail in that background and they would lose points for that in judging too.

A head and shoulders fine art portrait of a border collie dog in the backlit forest as an example of how to take beautiful pet photos

Shot at 1/400 second, f/1.8

Is the nose in focus? No.

Does it detract from the image? I doubt it. 

1/400 sec, f/1.8, ISO 400.

Here, despite being shot at f/1.8, here, the nose is quite in focus! Why? Becase I was far enough away that the depth o field was wide enough for her whole head to be in focus. I wasn’t even that far away! But, because she’s a larger dog, I have to be much further from her to fit her in the photo compared to a sheltie, or even a border collie. To have a small dog like a sheltie taking up this much of the photo would require me to be much closer to them – resulting in a narrower depth of field!

Here’s a photo of a teeny-tiny sheltie puppy to illustrate the concept. She probably fills up slightly LESS of the photo (meaning I’m further away than I could have been) and yet her nose is definitely soft. Her relative size and therefore my relative distance to her, affect the depth of field.

1/1600 sec (we’d been doing action photos), f/1.8, ISO 400. 

Now you can see, we’re VERY close to this dog, and her back ear is definitely blurry…. but because everything is on the same plane as her eye, the whole side of her face is in focus.

Group Photos

This may be a little advanced but I’ll add it here for future reference.

One time you MAY wish to narrow the aperture is when taking group photos, IF you aren’t skilled in Photoshop or the photo is more candid and taking multiple photos to merge in Photoshop wouldn’t be possible, like the photo of me and the boys below.

By having a wide aperture and therefore a narrow Depth of Field, photographing more than one dog would require them to be perfectly lined up, so that the eyes of each/every dog is in focus. This is almost impossible. Personally, I still shoot at f/1.8, and I photoshop the images together so each subject is in focus…. however, if that isn’t possible (or maybe you’re just feeling lazy and think they’re lined up close to perfect) then you could just make the aperture narrower, to get a larger depth of field, so hopefully they would both be in focus that way. 

The further away you are from your subjects, the wider your depth of field will also be, so you can use a combination of distance and aperture to make sure your group is in focus. 

Shot at 1/500 sec, f/4.5, ISO 1000 – I intentionally used a wider depth of field than normal (higher number) as I wanted to make sure myself and BOTH dogs were in focus, even if one of us was slightly closer to or further from the camera. Since we were playing around, cuddling, and interacting, doing a head-swap later would probably not be possible. Therefore it would be better to get all of us in focus in one shot.

That being said – this is an older photo now, and generally if I’m doing group photos or self portraits, I’ll only go to f/2.8. You really need to judge for yourself what aperture you need based on:

  • are they posing, or are they more candid/interacting? How likely is it you can do a head-swap?
  • how close/how much in line are they to each other?
  • how far away are you from them?

For some answers, f/1.8 or f/2.8 might be fine. For others, f/4 might be your safest option! Judge situation by situation.

Product Photos

Another time you MAY wish to narrow your aperture, in order to have more of the photo in focus, is if you’re doing product photography.

In this case, showcasing the product is generally more important than a super blurry background and everything else being all pretty and blurry. 

There’s no point in showing a super soft, plush and cosy bed…. if 90% of it is just blur. Trust me when I say you’ll be getting companies asking you to “remove the blur effect” from the photos. 

Again, as I’ve been saying, how much blur you get depends not only on your aperture, but how close you are to the subject too! If I’m doing a close up of my dog sleeping on a cosy bed… the only way to get a lot of the bed in focus would be to use f/7 or f/11… and considering I’m shooting indoors with two constant lights and am usually already at ISO 800 even when using f/2.8… it’s just not possible. In those cases, I often take a photo of the dog on the bed, then focus on the label/brand of the bed, and merge them together in Photoshop, much like I would for a group photo. Depending on how much of a difference there is in focal plane. It would be stupid if the dog was in focus, then the bed is out of focus, then the label is in focus… then the bed is out of focus again. This will look clearly Photoshopped and not good at all. 

In this case, choosing your angle to try and make sure there’s not a long distance between the front and back of the product will help more of it be in focus.

Same as photos of dog coats and clothing. There’s no point taking photos of dog jackets… if 90% of the jacket is nothing but blur.

Again… how close or far you are from the dog will play a huge role in how narrow the depth of field is and therefore how blurry everything is, and you CAN mix it up by giving your client (for example) some closer detail shots at f/2.8, and some further away full body shots with everything in focus at f/3.2. 

Just remember that in these circumstances: the product is usually more important than the blurry background.

1/500, f/2.8, ISO 125
1/400, f/4.5, ISO 250
1/800 sec, f/1.8, ISO 640
1/400 sec, f/2,2, ISO 500
1/500 sec, f/2,2, ISO 1250
1/640 sec, f/2.2, ISO 100
1/320, f/2,2, ISO 800

As you can see from the photos above, I used a VARIETY of aperture settings for product photography. Generally, it depends on:

  • the location and available light (I’m much more limited inside)
  • how far away I am from the dog (further away = I can use a wider aperture)
  • what angle the dog/product is to me (side on like Loki with the water-bottle or Journey in the jacket means a wider aperture would probably be ok)

1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600

This was part of a series of photos I took for a client, of a custom engraved keyring.

The keyring itself is VERY SMALL, as you can see on Teresa’s hand. 

The company wanted to show the dog that featured on the keyring.

They also wanted an outdoors, “golden light” kind of photo. 

If I got too far away from them, you couldn’t see the keyring or the details of it.

If I got very close to the keyring, then Journey was quickly out of focus, because getting him lined up with the hand was very difficult. 

I could go closer and do a head-swap: take a photo of the hand, and one of Journey, but then the depth of field discrepancies would be pretty obvious as the arm got blurry, then sharp, then blurry again.

I could make my aperture narrower than f/2.8 so the depth of field (amount of the photo in focus) was wider… but I was already at ISO 1600 due to the forest and backlight, I was already under-exposing, and if the photo got too noisy, there would be no detail on the product! While I normally don’t care that much about noise, there’s no point advertising the beautiful engraving of the key-ring… if it’s nothing but grainy noise!

1/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2500

In the end, I opted for Journey being slightly less than perfectly in focus, and took some other photos with him and Teresa deliberately out of focus.

I also, in a few cases, Photoshopped just the keyring – even from another photo – over the top of the original, because I had a better version that was sharper. Potentially this made the keyring too sharp for the hand holding it, but it’s such a small thing that only people looking for it would notice. 

1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600. Top is original, lower is with a better/sharper keychain Photoshopped in.

 

What COULD I have done better?

There’s only really a couple of options here.

  1. Go to a different location. Find a spot with much more overhead light, come back on a day without backlight, get on the edge of the woods, etc. This would allow me to either drop my ISO, OR narrow my aperture to have more of the photo in focus.
  2. Use a flash. By introducing a flash, I could easily have used a much narrower aperture without needing to push my ISO up, as I could drop my shutter speed dramatically. But I’m not (at the time of writing) confident enough to use it for client shoots when we only had 30 minutes of daylight left!

Aperture Examples

In the examples below, I was using my 135mm. I wanted to change only the aperture, to see how narrow I would need to go before the nose was in focus, and how this affected the background detail. Since it was the 135mm it retained pretty good compression throughout.

Keep in mind that I was quite close to Journey with this lens (eg., he is filling a lot of the frame). 

Keep in mind as well that as I narrow up the aperture, I had to adjust other settings – we cover this more in the Exposure lessons… but by the time I was at f/8 I needed ISO 5000 despite it being quite a light and bright day! So I was starting to see a lot of noise, simply because I wanted the nose in focus.

Hover to see the camera settings, click to enlarge.

135mm lens 1/400 sec, f/1.8, ISO 250
135mm lens 1/400 sec, f/1.8, ISO 250
135mm lens 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO 1600
135mm lens 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO 1600
Moved a bit closer, 135mm lens 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO 1600
135mm lens 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO 1600
135mm lens 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 5000
135mm lens 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 5000

Examples from the Video

f1,8
1/400, f/1.8, ISO 500
f2,2
1/400, f/2.2, ISO 500
f2,5
1/400, f/2.5, ISO 800
f2,8
1/400, f/2.8, ISO 800
f3,2
1/400, f/3.2, ISO 1000
f3,5
1/400, f/3.5, ISO 1250
f4
1/400, f/4, ISO 1600
f4,5
1/400, f/4.5, ISO 2000
f5
1/400, f/5, ISO 3200
f5,6
1/400, f/5.6, ISO 4000
f6,3
1/400, f/6.3, ISO 4000
f,7
1/400, f/7.1, ISO 4000
f,8
1/400, f/8, ISO 5000
f,9
1/400, f/9, ISO 6400
f,10
1/400, f/10, ISO 8000
F,19
1/400, f/18, ISO 20,000

Group Photos at f/1.8

These two images were taken at f/1.8. I took several photos where Loki was in focus, and several where Journey was in focus, and then combined the two in Photoshop so both dogs were in focus.

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Shutter Speed

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Exposure & Depth of Field Exposure Shutter Speed

Shot at 1/500 sec, f/1.8, ISO 160.

Shutter speed = how quickly the “eye” of the camera closes to freeze the action. The faster the shutter = the better it freezes moving objects, but, the less light that gets in. 

As a general rule, my shutter speed is never slower than 1/400 second. This is something I will rarely compromise, in order to get more light. It just isn’t worth it to end up with a blurry/soft photo.

For action, it is at least 1/1250 – faster if I have enough light! Ideally 1250 or 1600!

I usually keep my shutter speed at 1/400 because even Loki, my perfect model, is a living, breathing, moving creature. 1/400 freezes his slight movements, while still letting in as much light as possible. 

What are all these numbers?

Shutter speeds are represented as an amount of time – the time that the shutter is open, gathering light and data from the scene. 

Pick up your camera! Let’s have a look.

How you adjust the shutter speed will depend on your camera, and the setup you’ve chosen. I consistently forget which of the top dials changes my aperture, and which changes the shutter speed! Good thing I rarely need to touch either of them!

Change the shutter speed. See the numbers on the screen changing? 

Let’s make it as slow as it can go. You might end up with it saying: “Bulb”. This is a setting where you trigger the shutter and it stays open until you trigger it again – great for if you need exposures of longer than 30 seconds! Definitely not useful for us as pet photographers!

What shutter speed range your camera has, really depends on your camera.

Eventually, you’ll see something like 1, or 1″. This is a 1 second exposure. The shutter is open and gathering light and information for a whole second.

As you get faster, you’ll begin to see fractions of a second. This may be represented as a decimal at first, and you’ll see this on my Sony as I move up from 1″. For example, you might see 0.8″ (this is 4/5ths of a second) 0.5″ (1/2 a second), and so on.

As you get faster still, those fractions of a second get smaller and smaller – aka, faster and faster. Imagine you have a whole second – that already seems pretty fast! Now break it in half, you have 1/2 a second (0.5″). Seems even faster, right? If, during that 1/2 a second, anything moves – even a little bit – that movement gets captured and results in blur.

Make your shutter speed faster.. Now you’re breaking that one second, into 125 equal pieces, and take a photo in just ONE of those pieces. 

Break it into 500 equal pieces, and take a photo in one of those teeny, tiny moments of time. Now we’re talking about 1/500 of a second. This means there’s much less time for anything to move. 

Perhaps it’s better not to think about shutter speed “freezing motion” so much as it is about having a chance to CAPTURE motion in the first place.

Shutter Speed: Fast and Slow, Light and Dark

With your camera (hopefully) in hand, take off the lens cap. Let’s do some experimenting.

Make your shutter speed very slow again. What happens? If you have a mirrorless camera, you’ll be able to see the exposure already on your screen. If you have a DSLR you may need to take a photo, or turn on Live View. 

The photo should be quite bright. Why? Because it has a lot of time to let light in to the sensor. 

Are there ever times we might want to use a very slow shutter speed? 

Yes, and no.

One of our amazing LJ members does a lot of Astro photography, and for that, one needs extremely slow shutter speeds. Why? Because the camera needs as much time as possible to capture the faint light of the stars! They seem bright to us, but in reality that light is a long, long, LONG way away, and the camera needs time to capture it. Your camera may need between 10-30 seconds for astrophotography. Similarly, any situations where you’re capturing faint light, will be improved by a longer shutter time, as it allows that light to embed itself into the image. 

Another time you MAY want to slow your shutter speed, is if you’re doing “long exposures” – for example, at waterfalls! If you want those magical flowing white waterfalls, this can only be captured with a slow shutter speed, as it’s the constant motion of the white water that creates this effect. 

Taken at 1/10 sec, f/4, ISO 100. Not a composite! My dogs stood perfectly still for the 1/10 sec, which doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but try it for yourself and see how difficult it is!

While the answer MAY have been “to get more detail in the waterfall”, this isn’t the case at all. 

In fact, it would have been because I was already at ISO 100, and because of the very slow shutter speed, my photo would have been EXTREMELY bright, due to all the light coming in for the 1/10th of a second. Since I couldn’t let less light in with my ISO, the only other option I had to get to the correct exposure was to make my aperture narrower, limiting the light that way!

Let’s continue with our experiment!

Now start to make your shutter speed faster – don’t change any other settings! Again, with a mirrorless camera, you can see what’s happening to the exposure. It’s going to be getting darker and darker.

Why?

Because there will be less time for light to get to the sensor, as we chop that fraction of time into smaller and smaller teeny tiny pieces!

Is there a time to use VERY FAST shutter speeds?!

Of course! But only when necessary!

You will want to use faster shutter speeds for action photos. Anything over 1/1250 is great. If you’re photographing a dog sport on a very sunny, bright day, and your shutter speed is 1/2000, your ISO is already at 100, and you’re happy with your aperture where it is, but the image is still to bright…. then by all means, put the shutter speed faster! 

Dog jumping in water

Shot at 1/1250 sec, f/1.8, ISO 1600. This could (and probably should) have had a faster shutter speed in order to really freeze the water-drops! 1/1250 is generally enough to capture most of a dog’s motion, unless they’re very close to the camera…. but not water droplets. They need 1/2000 or so to make them sharp and defined. If you click to enlarge this image, you’ll see the motion blur on all the small droplets especially in the front splash.

Also, if I’m doing portrait photos on a very bright day. Let’s say my aperture is at f/1.8 because I want a nice, soft blurry background. That’s letting in a lot of light. My ISO is at 100 – that means, it’s as low as it can go, which means it’s as “dark” as it can be. I COULD change my aperture to let in less light… but that will change the look of my photo too. So, the most logical option for me would be to make the shutter speed faster, to let in less light!

This photo is a great example of the above. It was quite bright out (though not harsh sun). Usually I would take this kind of portrait on 1/500 second, f/1.8 and ISO whatever was needed. 

However on this day, because of all the extra light, I was already on f/1.8 and ISO 100 (as low as it can go, so letting in the least amount of light), and it was still EXTREMELY bright. My options would have been to narrow the aperture – meaning there would have been a lot more detail in the foreground, and in that soft creamy background…. or to increase the shutter speed, which would just freeze any small motions Journey made even better.

As a result, the settings were: 1/1250 sec, f/1.8, ISO 100. 

IF, on the other hand, I was in a location, and I turned on my camera to find that my settings were: 1/500 sec, f/1.8, ISO 800 and it was still too bright… my first step would NOT be to make my shutter speed faster! FIRST, I would drop my ISO. If it got as low as it could go and it was still too bright… THEN I would make my shutter speed faster.

Common Shutter Speed Mistakes

A too-slow shutter speed, of about 1/125 second, is the MAIN mistake I see beginners making when they’re wondering why their images aren’t very sharp. 

This photo (click to enlarge), as well as having a lot else wrong with it, was probably taken at 1/125 second. Everything is slightly soft and blurry because of this slow shutter speed. 

Here you can se what motion blur looks like! It looks like everything is a bit “shaken”. Everything is a bit out of focus. It seems like the eyes SHOULD be in focus, but they’re not really. Nothing is! This is one way we can tell it’s motion blur.

Below: the motion blur vs. a faster shutter speed without blur.

The other common mistake I see in critiques, are overly fast shutter speeds for situations that don’t need it.

Often I’ll see shutter speeds of 1/6400, for a dog lying in some grass.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with 1/6400!! Except that in these photos, the ISO has been pushed WAY up: ISO 800, or ISO 2000 or ISO 4000…. which results in a lot of noise, an a lack of image quality that is totally unnecessary! If the shutter speed had been set at its slowest for the situation, then the ISO could have been brought down as low as possible. 

Quick Guide

  • Normal portraits: no slower than 1/400 sec
  • Trundling around/some slight movement: 1/800 sec
  • Action/running: 1/1250 sec or faster
  • If already at ISO 100, but still too bright? Make the shutter speed faster.
  • If at a high ISO and shutter speed already at 1/400? YOU need to determine if it’s worth risking motion blur by going slower, OR better to get more noise by increasing ISO
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ISO

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Exposure & Depth of Field Exposure ISO

Table of Contents

The ISO of your camera controls how sensitive the sensor is to light.

It goes back to the old film days – at university, one assignment I had was to take a series of photos with a film camera. We had to go buy the film and choose one with an ISO that would be suitable based on the kind of photography we were going to be doing. Normal, every-day outdoor photography would use a low ISO film… evening photography would need much higher ISO film and it would come out noisy without as much detail as the low version.

Shot at 1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 12,800

Shot at 1/1250 sec, f/3.2, ISO 100

What is ISO & what does it do?

In very short terms:

The lower the ISO = the less sensitive to light = the better the image quality. 

A photo with ISO 100 will have no noise/grain, and you will be able to lighten it up in editing quite a bit without noticing a loss of quality.

The higher the ISO = the darker the surroundings can be = the worse the image quality.

Does that mean you should take all your photos on ISO 100!?

No! Because you would have to compromise somewhere else – with a very slow shutter speed, for example – in order to let enough light in to properly expose the image. What you want is to use the lowest ISO for the given light conditions, based on the other settings you’ve chosen.

So, a low-light portrait with f/1.8 and a shutter speed of 1/500 is going to have a much lower ISO than you would need for an action shot in the same location, with a shutter speed of 1/1250. You can’t compromise on shutter speed, Aperture is already at its widest, so the only thing to allow more light onto the sensor is ISO.

That same action shot taken on a brighter day, would require a lower ISO! It all depends on the lighting conditions.

This is why I recommend, if you’re just learning and you’re finding this all very difficult, to begin by setting your shutter speed and aperture yourself, and use Auto-ISO if you need to. Have a look at what ISO the camera is choosing, and gradually begin to set it yourself, until you can do it without thinking about it!

 

1/1250 sec, f/1.8, ISO 4000
1/1250 sec, f/1.8, ISO 640

Some cameras are amazing at dealing with low light conditions! My Sony is one of them, easily able to get to ISO 10,000 without too much trouble as long as I don’t then try and lighten the image in editing! 

Other cameras will start showing a lot of noise at about ISO 800. You need to learn YOUR camera!

It’s best to get your exposure as close to correct as possible in camera (without making the light areas TOO light) to avoid having to do any CRAZY lightening in editing, which produces a lot more noise than using a higher ISO in the first place.

There is also a balance (and this varies from camera to camera) or a tipping point as to how high your ISO can be before you can’t really lighten the image in editing without SEVERE loss of quality.

1/500, f/1.8, ISO 200
1/400 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20,000 (taken as an experiment to see how such a ridiculously high ISO would look. I would never shoot this high in reality)

The Difference in ISO

Below are two images taken with relatively similar settings, except for one glaring difference – the ISO. One was taken at twilight, an action shot and wanting to preserve some detail in the landscape. It needed to be lightened up to get detail on the dog.

The other was taken in shade at the middle of a sunny day, but still needed to be lightened up. 

I included the straight out of camera version of each, the final edits, and a close crop of the face so you can see the difference in image quality.
DSC05077-3
Settings: 1/1250, f/3.2, ISO 100. So similar settings in SOME ways, with a HUGE difference for the ISO. I still had to lighten up the dog to get more detail out of her face... AND I cropped the image...
DSC05077
But because it was only ISO 100, there is a heap of detail in the fur and on the face still.
DSC05077-2
As you can see here, there's no noise at all.

How high is too high?

Photographers are often scared of a high ISO and noise so the answer to the question of “how high of an ISO is too high” is going to have to be one you decide on for yourself. 

But for me personally, there are some important considerations:

  • Do I need to underexpose, and how much?
  • What is the purpose of this photo?
  • How important is GETTING the photo with a high ISO, vs. missing out?

My answers to these questions usually lead me to taking the photo anyway. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? I get a photo, it has some noise. Is having a noisy photo better or worse than not having the photo at all?

This photo of Dusty is a perfect example.

Taken at 1/320 (already slow for me!) f/1.8 (maximum aperture), ISO 8000.

It was dark. We’d been doing a photoshoot for about 2 hours, and the light was pretty much gone. I’d been taking photos of Laura and her other dogs when I look over to see Dusty lying just like this. He was quite old, and not well, and we weren’t sure how much time he had left with us. 

In this photo, there were no crazy highlights I had to worry about, I could expose pretty much correctly for his fur, which meant I wouldn’t have to raise the exposure much in editing. 

So to answer my questions from above:

  • Do I need to underexpose, and how much?
    • No. Expose for the brightness of his fur. This resulted in 1/2 his face just a tiny bit darker than the other side.
  • What is the purpose of this photo?
    • It may be printed as wall art, or she may not choose it at all. It was hard to know at the time. 
  • How important is GETTING the photo with a high ISO, vs. missing out?
    • Extremely important. This was the last chance we had to take any more photos before we finished for the night, and there was absolutely no option for a reshoot. This was Dusty’s “End of Life” session. 

 

Could she have gone without this photo? Sure. But in the end she chose it as part of her collection, and it means so much to her. In the end, applying a little denoise, the noise/high ISO is the last thing she’s looking at. All she sees is the soulful eyes of her best boy, and remembers the time we were there doing the shoot, finishing up, turning and seeing him lying just perfectly like this after being such a trooper for 2 hours. For me, that is ABSOLUTELY worth a higher ISO.

 

Here’s the thing.

If you’re doing a client shoot, the client will want the photos. Or not. It’s better to have them, than not. At least then they have the choice.

If you’re doing a shoot for yourself and the photos are going on social media, I can almost guarantee you nobody is going to notice, or care about noise.

In many human portrait photography circles, grain is added as an aesthetic. Don’t worry about it. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not a death sentence. It doesn’t make you a bad photographer. You are not going to be sent to pet photographer jail for having some noise in your photos.

 

1/400 sec, f/1.8 ISO 800
1/320 sec, f/1.8 ISO 1250,
1/400 sec, f/1.8, ISO 2000,
1/400 sec, f/1.8 ISO 4000
1/400 sec, f/1.8, ISO 2500

How Editing & ISO Go together

Please excuse my terrible graph (you can click to enlarge it). I’m an artist not a mathematician.  

Along the lower axis is the ISO, from 100 to 12800. I’ve assigned an approximate value of how much you can lighten in editing (blue line, from 100-0%). So if I severely underexpose an image with ISO 100, I have a lot of flexibility to lighten it (the noise is at 0, ability to lighten is at 100) . 

If I underexpose an image at ISO3200, I have much LESS flexibility to lighten it, due to the noise/image degradation.

So if I’m shooting at ISO 1600 or higher, I need my exposure to be much more correct, than if I’m shooting at 800 or lower.

ISO & Editing Comparisons

Below are some photos I took for a different lesson, looking at locations, but it’s interesting here too. These locations were quite low light (thick forest) with a lot of light behind the dog.

What I find most interesting is looking at whether it worked out better to have underexposed it and had a lower ISO, or to have slightly blown out the highlights and had a higher ISO.

Photo 1: 1/400 seconds, f/1.8, ISO 3200

Photo 2: 1/400 seconds, f/1.8, ISO 6400

Final photo: fully edited. 

In this case, it was definitely better to take the version with the higher ISO, than the darker version with the lower ISO. Brightening this image resulted in a lot more noise and loss of detail compared to just getting the photo more correctly exposed in the first place.

Image 1: 1/400 seconds, f/1.8, ISO 3200

Image 2: 1/400 seconds, f/1.8 ISO 1600

Final image: Fully edited.

In this case, I chose to edit the darker image with the lower ISO since both of them were underexposed, the amount of noise/detail loss from lightening the lower-ISO image would be about the same as if I’d worked on the higher-ISO image… but I would also be fighting the blown highlights in the higher ISO image.

What to do when the ISO is too high

If you know your camera’s limit for ISO (and I hope you do! Or you’re going to go learn), you might find yourself at a point where it’s getting beyond what you consider acceptable.

Remember we talked about an acceptable number of useable photos in the shutter speed lesson?

The same concept applies here.

After all, I COULD take photos at ISO 20,000 but are they going to be useable? 

That’s questionable. So my acceptable limit is somewhere around ISO 8-10,000 with my camera. 

So when you hit your own limit, what options do you have?

  • Assuming you’re already shooting with the aperture wide open, there’s nothing you can change about aperture that will help you let in more light.
  • Theoretically you could make your shutter speed slower, as I did with Dusty above. But you begin to risk camera shake and blurry images the slower you go.
  • You could underexpose, however as discussed, this may actually not help you at all, and it might be better to shoot with a correct exposure and higher ISO. Don’t think that going darker is going to fix your high ISO issue. It could do the opposite.
  • Move to a new location. Seriously, this might be your only option. Go somewhere with more ambient light. Get out of the woods. Find some open sky.
  • Use an external lighting source. A reflector, flash, or whatever you like, is going to provide more light, and therefore you don’t need such a high ISO.
  • Take the photos anyway and use the denoise feature in editing, or get another program like Topaz Denoise AI.

Unfortunately there is no magic, secret solution here. 

If your camera struggles with ISO or under exposing, then you need to learn to work within those limits. Make sure you’re in a location with enough light, and watch your exposure. 

People often think I have some magic trick for ISO/Noise, but there isn’t one. It is what it is. My camera is extremely good with ISO, but I am also generally choosing locations and lighting situations carefully to make sure there is enough ambient light getting onto the dog, that I know what my camera is capable of, and that I make smart, purposeful decisions about when I underexpose.

Below are 4 examples.

On the Left, the photos were taken in the woods with a thick canopy of tree cover over the top. Note the settings, particularly the ISO.

The photos on the right were taken about 20 meters away, on a narrow road, so there was SOME (though not a lot) more ambient light from the sky overhead. 

Literally just moving to this “lighter” location cuts my ISO in half without having to change any other settings… and yet both locations look exactly the same. There’s no indication that I was on a road or at the edge of the woods in the photos on the right. 

Sony 135mm on Sony a7iii. 1/400 sec, f/1.8, ISO 1600
135mm on Sony a7iii 1/400 sec, f/1.8, ISO 800
18-55mm at 55mm. 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400
18-55mm at 55mm. 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 3200

In this video you can see exactly how dark our “dark woods” looked (in fact, it was very bright and sunny on this particular day, but the canopy overhead is very thick), compared to the “road” we ended up on.

It’s amazing to me how such a small change can make a really big difference to your settings. Being conscious of your available light and location is super important. If I managed to go from ISO 1600 to ISO 800 just by moving to this small road, imagine my settings if I’d found a larger clearing or a larger open area.

If your camera struggles with ISO, smart, purposeful choices of location is absolutely important in your photography.

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Backgrounds

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Pet Photography: Next Level Choosing a Location Backgrounds

Training your eyes to “see” backgrounds is probably going to be one of the first location skills you develop.

There are 4 main “types” of background we can look for, and it’s important we recognise each, and how they may change the mood of our images. 

Open Sky

As it sounds, open sky is a background where there are no trees, or the trees end and then there is a large area of open sky above them. 

  • Open sky is great when you have dawn or twilight colours, or dramatic clouds, rainbows and so on
  • Open sky leaves us with few editing choices, as adding any kinds of vignetting to the sky is obvious and fake, since the sky doesn’t naturally grow darker in the corners
  • On grey days or bright days open sky can be quite ugly, as it is just a white/blue/grey mass. There is no contrast, nothing interesting. It’s best avoided in this case! All that solid white will draw attention aay from your dog. 
  • Open sky can be interesting when using an off camera flash or secondary lighting source as you can dramatically underexpose the sky to bring out cloud details, colours and so on. 
  • You should expose the photo for the sky, to keep the colours and/or details, and to avoid blowing out the highlights, as with the last photo in the example below. 

Having a "Solid" Background

Unless you have some reason for including the open sky in your images, I recommend having some kind of background, that blocks out or filters all or most of the sky. This could be trees, a bush, rocks, a building – whatever you like. There may be gaps between the trees, or there may not. In each case you’ll get a different effect, and that effect can alter the mood of your image too!

Depending on the compression of your lens (longer lenses will have more compression, so will squash the background up, blurring it more and turning any light in the background to bokeh spots) you will want to consider how much filtering the background does of the sky – or maybe there will be no filtering at all.

As you can see in the examples below, because the wider lenses show more of the background, the bokeh is tiny, and there is a lot of it, if there are any gaps between the trees. On a longer lens (here the 85, it’s even nicer with the 135mm) the spots are larger, and there are less of them, you get less of the background in the image. 

Wider 28mm f/2.8 lens
85mm f/1.8 lens
28mm f/2.8 lens
85mm f/1.8 lens

Let’s begin to train your “photographer’s eye”. The images below were taken in ONE location, with Loki standing beside a single tree. I rotated around the tree to face in three different directions, to show how different kinds of background produce different effects.

Wide Gaps

How do you think this background will look when Loki is in focus? Can you picture it in your mind’s eye? Will it be pretty? Imagine it again with less thin branches, but simply wide gaps between the tree trunks. What does it look like then?

Wide gaps between trees generally aren’t all that aesthetically pleasing. In this case, there are quite some branches criss-crossing between the open space, to “soften” it and to give it a little bit of definition. But without them, this background would be white blobs with no definition. In either case, so much brightness draws our eye away from the dog and even with editing it would be difficult to close and hide this much sky!

When you’re out looking for locations, try and avoid areas of open sky showing through wide gaps in the trees.

Narrow Gaps

How do you think this background will look when Loki is in focus? Can you picture it in your mind’s eye? Will it be pretty? If you have more than one lens length that you like to use, try and picture it with a wide angle lens, and with a longer length lens! How would the effects change then?

Narrow gaps between trees are what we are usually looking for in our photography, as they create this beautiful soft bokeh (here, the sun was actually behind ME, but had turned the sky in the background a pale orange. But it isn’t backlight!). This bokeh can usually be softened and reduced in editing so that they aren’t so bright and distracting, but they provide an interesting background. 

How much bokeh you want does depend on your preferences and the mood you are trying to achieve. In general, a large area of bokeh like this would not work so well for a “dark and moody” photo, because there is just too much light in the background. Some people want very minimal bokeh because they find it too distracting. Other people want more! You have to decide how much you like for your photography.

One thing to note is that I prefer to have my bokeh in front of, rather than behind the dog  – especially if he’s looking toward or posed to the side. When there is bokeh behind the dog, we are drawn to it, and have no reason to return into the image. So do be aware of where it is in relation to how you’ve poisioned your dog, where he is looking, and so on.  In the case of Loki above, because he’s looking forward, it doesn’t really matter. 

No Gaps/Completely Solid

Here we have a background with only the tiniest corner of open sky at the top left. Most of the background is solid. How will this look when Loki is in focus? What kind of MOOD could we create from this kind of solid background?

Soft, solid backgrounds like this are very reliable. They (generally) don’t have many distractions in terms of bright areas – you can see tiny hints of the sky here at the top, and top left corner, but nothing compared to the bokeh from the last photo as it’s so closed in). You’ll find backgrounds like this in dense woods, thick shrubbery, or any time there is just no/not much hint of the sky getting through.

However, they can feel a little bit “flat”, depending on what is in the background, so we may need to do some work in the location itself, and in editing to make sure it is still interesting and engaging. 

These are great for making dark & moody images, as we can really darken the background, manipulate the light, change colours and so on.

Examples

So now that we’ve had a look at the different background “types” that you might find, let’s look at some more examples of finished, edited images. Can you picture the “type” of background that was used in the scene?

One trick I discovered recently is, if you’re out location scouting or out for a walk, and you want to get a bit of an idea of how the background will look through a lens, grab your phone, put your hand quite close to the lens and force the phone to focus on it. This will blur the background (more naturally than using “portrait mode”) and you can kind of get a sense of how it might appear through a lens (particularly a wide angle lens). Of course it isn’t perfect, but you can begin to develop your photographer’s eye this way even if you don’t have your camera with you. 

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Self Evaluation & Elements of Style

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Pet Photography: Next Level Photography Style Self Evaluation & Elements of Style

Table of Contents

It’s important that we know what elements actually go in to creating a photo. Sometimes it is many different elements which create a complex and detailed image with layers which all come together to create a mood or tell a story, for example, pose, lighting, expression, breed, location, lens length and colour all working together.

Sometimes there are fewer elements, but which still work together with cohesion to make an image which makes sense.

The key to developing as a photographer is being able to analyse where we are in our journey, find what needs to improve, and then working on it.

 

Make sure you check the end of the lesson for a downloadable assignment!

You Don't Know What You Don't Know

You may still be at the stage in your photography journey where you’re learning what does and doesn’t work, what elements make a good photo, and which don’t, what things you like, and what things you don’t. Basically, you may not know which elements are supporting our goal, and which are not! 

Good! It’s amazing that you’re here!

Let’s begin to see if we can break down the building blocks that make a photo (and therefore a style).

 

Before you continue, I want you to have a look at the images below, and go to the accounts of your favourite photographers. Write down everything you see in the images that you think makes up that photographer’s style. What do they do, to make their artwork their own? It may also help you to note what they don’t do! Below, I will share a list of elements that go into the photo (and which we will be working through in these lessons). How many elements did you think of? How many were missing?

My Style

I’m sure if you’re all here you’re familiar with my style already, but below are a selection of photos which I feel best represent my “style” – and I think it’s important to note, that this is STILL constantly evolving, although in much more subtle ways these days.

Elements of Style

Now that you have your list, let’s see how many “elements” that could go into a photo you noticed:

  • perspective
  • type of photo (portrait, candid, action)
  • the scene itself (forest, beach, snow, etc)
  • elements of the scene
    • foreground
    • midground/dog’s level
    • background
    • visual interest
    • frames
    • leading lines
    • curves
  • whether the subject “interacts” with elements in the scene (on a log, on a rock, in amongst a plant, etc)
  • season
    • seasonal elements (eg., heather, flowers, snow, autumn colours, etc)
  • light conditions
    • natural
    • off-camera flash
  • light direction
  • pose
    • how the dog is positioned
    • looking direction
    • curve/shape to the body
    • distance from subject to the camera/amount they fill the frame
  • expression
  • breed
  • apparent age of the subject (puppy, senior, or adult)
  • lens length? (wide angle has a very different look to a longer focal length)
  • use of colours
    • common tones
    • how many colours
    • strength of the colours
    • colour choices (contrasting, monotone, complementary)
  • contrast and light tones (eg., high contrast, raised blacks so “soft” contrast in background, strong contrast, etc)
  • detail (eg., how much detail is in the background. Is it totally soft and blurred out? Is there detail around/near the dog?)
  • post-processing choices
    • light flares
    • light haze behind dog
    • amount of work on the eyes
    • changes to the natural colour of the scene (eg., winter blues)
    • anything else that is obviously an editing decision

Wow. That’s a long list. The lessons in this course are going to dive into many of the elements above so don’t worry if it seems like a lot just now!

 

Have a look at the list you made, and the list above. Did any elements surprise you? 

 

You’ll notice I don’t add “mood” on there, because I believe that the mood is created with a combination of the above elements.

For example:

A photo taken on a bright day, in a field of wildflowers, featuring a golden retriever puppy bouncing through with its mouth open, has one VERY clear mood…

Whereas…

A photo of a wolfdog in the middle of a dark forest, with the colours stripped out, looking directly down the lens… 

has a very DIFFERENT mood.

How many elements did you notice in the work of your favourite photographers? How many did you miss? Go back and look again, particularly at the elements you hadn’t considered. Do those artists not really make consistent use of those elements?

Remember, this list isn’t meant to say that: “To have a style you must ALWAYS take photos of dogs in a sit”, but you will see certain poses/breeds/expressions/lens lengths etc are favoured by some artists, and this goes into making up their style!

Self-Evaluation

In order to improve our work, we need to be able to look critically at our work.
You might be feeling a bit overwhelmed right now after seeing that list above! Don’t worry, you don’t need to sit down and decide on your style (in fact, you probably already have the beginnings of a style now, even if you’re just starting to find your feet!. BUT! We do need to be able to look at our work in order to improve, and to know how to better achieve our photography goal.

Instead of the massive long list above, let’s see if we can break down the main elements of photography into a few broader categories. Don’t try to focus on and improve all of these at once.

Pick the most important thing, and improve it. Then move on to the next, and so on.

Each category provides opportunities for beginners to advanced level photographers to make improvements. These aren’t necessarily in order of priority, but I do think the first few things are most important.

Focus

Is the subject in focus? Are the eyes in focus? Are there intentionally out of focus elements? 

Perspective/Angle

Does the photo give a sense of place, and does the dog have “presence“? Or was perspective used creatively, intentionally, and for a purpose?

Composition

Are parts of the dog chopped off? Horizons? Does it adhere to any “rules”?. Later, are there leading lines, curves or contrasts in light & dark which draw our focus back to the subject?

Lighting

Is the light flattering? Are there crazy shadows or highlights? Are the highlights blown out? Does the light work? Is it used creatively? 

Editing

Is the editing overdone? Do the edits draw attention away from, or to the subject? 

Purpose

Is the photo/background worthwhile taking? Does the dog “look good” in the photo? Is there a reason for taking this photo? Is there something pretty/beautiful/unique/moving/interesting/playful about the photo?

Cohesion

Does the photo makes sense? Does the mood make sense with the lighting, the pose, the expression, location and so on? Does everything “fit” together? Or, if not, are there clashes on purpose, which make a stronger photo?

Have a look at your most recent photos. What areas do you think you could focus on a bit more? What areas are you proud of what you’ve already achieved?

Pick one thing to really focus on next time you get your camera out. Check out the lessons in that area and go out with a battle plan!

Assignment

Whether you complete this assignment or to what degree is up to you. It is more here as a chance for you to take a moment and to really reflect on and think about the elements in these lessons. You won’t be graded on it, it’s simply for your own benefit.

Because of the way the system works, it won’t let you mark the lesson as complete until you upload something. If you really don’t want to fill it in, but want to mark the lesson complete, just upload a blank pdf. I really won’t mind.

Click to download

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Finding Your Style

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Pet Photography: Next Level Photography Style Finding Your Style

The Beginnings of Style

When do you think an artist begins to develop their style? We have established that it’s not really a conscious process, so when do you think they go from just doing All The Things, to “having a style”? 

Below is a gallery of some images we’ve come across already in this course. This was from a photographer at the beginning of their photography journey, from when they just before, to when they began to learn more about the technical side of taking pet photos. Do you think they have a style? Or, maybe a better question is, elements do you think they were already favouring, at this early stage in their journey? Where do you think their style might have taken them? 

The Development of Style

Surprise! If you hadn’t guessed it yet, all the photos above were mine.

Did you know already?

Was it a lucky guess? Did the large number of border collies give me away?

Can you see elements of my style already coming through in my photos?

However, I recommend you don’t think too hard about it, unless you really want to. But if you’re interested, and wan to delve deeper into it, let’s start to unravel it a bit.

So now we know that style comes from:

  • aesthetic decisions
  • decisions made with a rationale/explanation
  • a combination of elements that support the two above points

Have a look at the photos you love most. The ones you’re most proud of. Even if you can’t get the technique exactly perfect yet, what are do you notice that is already consistent across your photos?

What elements from the list above do you notice? What aesthetic decisions did you make – consciously or unconsciously? Why did you make those decisions? Are there certain elements or things you DON’T do? (For example, in my photos I can tell you immediately that I don’t take photos in full sunlight, I don’t tend to do sitting poses very often, and  I don’t usually do candids.)

These things, along with the elements you noted earlier about your favourite photographers, are likely to be the beginnings and the makings of your style. 

You might not be ready to answer those questions yet, and that’s ok! If you’re learning, working, practising and creating, before you know it, you’ll have your style, without even realising you’d found it. Don’t feel like you need to rush, or to sit down and write out exactly what your style is, or is going to be.

There seems to be this pressure on new photographers to “find their style” or they’ll never make it.

Style grows. It changes and adapts as you learn and experiment and try new things.

At the end of the day… do what you enjoy. Do what you think is beautiful and fills you with joy. Create the kinds of photos that captivate you, and others will be captivated too! In a world of 7 billion people, there will always be people who love your work, and people who hate it. Do what you love, and your style will come from that.

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Photography Goal

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Pet Photography: Next Level Photography Style Photography Goal

Our stylistic choices should always lead back to our goal as pet photographers. I believe, that although all “genres” of (pet) photography may have slightly different goals in general, at the heart of it all is the aim of:

Drawing our audience’s eyes to the subject, and keeping them within the photo for as long as possible.

There surely can be few other goals for a pet photographer. Perhaps some other goals will mingle with the one above or will favour different methods for achieving the above goal, if we are taking ourselves seriously as artists who make artful photographs. For example:

  • An agility or disc-dog photographer still wants to draw the eye to the subject, with a photo which shows the power, speed, movement and intensity of the dog
  • A commercial photographer wants to draw the eye to the subject and the product, and ensure that the product is clearly visible and appealing
  • A landscape photographer wants to draw the eye to the subject, within an incredible scene, perhaps showing the beauty, the power, or the scale of the scene in relation to the subject – all of which will keep the audience in the photo
  • A photo of a dog and an owner seeks to draw the eye to the subjects, together, showing their relationship, their connection
  • A journalist, or any photographer doing any kind of journalistic photography wants to draw our attention to the scene and the subjects within it, to tell a story, to make a statement, or to invoke emotion
  • For ourselves. Although this seems like an “outward” goal – to try and please our audience, we can be our own audience, and fall in love with our images because we have created something dynamic and beautiful. I know I have my favourites, and I know why they’re my favourites, and I would happily look at them for a long time!
The only time our goal is otherwise to the above, is when we are taking “happy snaps” for no intended audience or purpose, for our own enjoyment (and even then, I personally would want a photo which draws my eye to the subject and keeps me within it). I’ve heard it said that as photographers, we are storytellers. We are constantly telling our story or the story of our subject within our work. And I agree with that being at the core of what we do, but there must be a clearer intent to how we do that. To say “I tell a story,” one could post a badly composed, badly lit photo of a dog sniffing another dog’s butt. Is it telling a story? Yes. Is it powerful, beautiful photography? Probably not. 
 

Our style must support our goal. And our goal should be clear and intentional.

Which brings us back to our saturation-loving novice photographer from the last topic. Does his aesthetic choices (and therefore, rationale for those choices) support our goal of drawing the viewer’s attention to the subject, and keep them in the photo?

I would hazard a guess that it would not. Strong colours would detract from the subject, who is likely lost amongst them, overwhelmed by them, while the colours themselves are loud and lary and probably too much. 

Below are a selection of images.  Look at them critically and ask if they are succeeding in our photography goal of: Drawing our audience’s eyes to the subject, and keeping them within the photo for as long as possible.

Do you want to stay in the image, or do you click on quickly? What is it about that image that works, or doesn’t work? You may not at this stage be able to “verbalise” why one photo works better than another. It might be a feeling. See if you can really dig into that feeling and pinpoint what is causing it.

And by the way just because some (not all) of the images below are mine, doesn’t mean the photo is “good”. 

There are a lot of photos below. Don’t dwell on them too long. Glance at them, ask if you’re “captivated” and why/why not, then move on. I just wanted to give you a WIDE variety of photos to look at.

If you’re not entirely sure yet why one photo worked and another didn’t, don’t worry! That’s what we’re going to start looking into in the course, and over the next few topics!

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Location & Our Photography Goal

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Pet Photography: Next Level Choosing a Location Location & Our Photography Goal

One thing to consider when finding and setting up locations, is our goal as photographers.

Which is to captivate our audience. 

If you remember back to the lessons on style, we talked about wanting to captivate our audience and keep them in the image for as long as possible.

Location can play a big part in this! As you’ve seen by now, using layers can create depth in our images, using frames can draw focus to the centre or the subject, but we can get even more specific and look at things like the curve of a branch or a leaf.

Ultimately, our viewers go on a subconscious journey when they land on our image:
They land on the eyes first, then their eye will be caught by something. It may be caught by an area of bright bokeh, by some sharp and detailed grasses, or by a colour which clashes. If we do our job right, the elements in the image will help to lead our viewer BACK into the image and back to the dog’s eyes. If we don’t, we set up opportunities for them to leave.

Bright bokeh along the edges of an image give the viewer clear “exit signs” to leave. There is no reason to circle back around. Similarly, bokeh BEHIND the dog who is looking in one direction, with dark space in front of the dog, will draw our eye backward and out of the image.

Ferns or branches curving toward the dog near the edge of an image, or even near the dog, may help to flow the view back toward the dog. On the other hand, ferns, leaves, grasses and so on curving AWAY from the dog, especially near the edge of the frame, is a clear sign to leave. Let’s have a look at some examples of this in action.

And I want to note that this does NOT mean that I am constantly on the lookout for perfectly and strategically placed ferns, leaves, grasses and weeds… however… they are WELL worth being aware of, especially in editing, when you can make some decisions then as to whether you should remove those elements altogether, or subdue them, or make them work more in your favour by having them enhance the flow through the image.

Wow lots of lines!

Basically, with each of these images, I land you in the image on the dog’s eyes (circled), then show you how a viewer’s eye MIGHT flow through the image, and why it might be successful, or not. 
In this one, I predict the viewer would get drawn to the left of the image first, to the bright spot, before hitting the darkened area and being drawn to the ferns and plants which curve downward to the dog. So you end up at the dog again, and maybe this time get drawn to the right, where you hit another quite dark area, and reach some other plants curving back toward the dog. As such, you end up kind of “transfixed” at the dog, because all elements are curving you back inward.

Let’s compare this to the less edited version of this image….

Can you see why I might have removed that tree trunk in the middle?

In this case, we begin on the eyes, and are immediately sucked to the very bright spot. We hit the tree trunk, and ricochet out of the image because it’s awkwardly in the middle of the frame. If we were to go to the right, there is nothing stopping our escape. The plants near Loki are trying to help, but they’re not doing much. 

Here is a LOVELY simple example. This image is framed on either side by trees (I think I photoshopped the tree on the left in as a copy)… but, there are many elements curving outward, including his ears, and especially that beautiful leaf on the mossy stump. Let’s see what happens if we tidy up the image a little and flip that leaf…

What do you think?
It might not seem like much, but these small factors CAN help our image fit together better. Here are a lot more examples – hover over the image for some information about each one. 

Here we land on Journey's eyes, then follow the shape of his body & curve of the moss to the dark lower part & dark left hand side, where we get looped back to the tunnel of light. The curved log in the background and tree trunk on the right also help direct us back into the image.
Here we land on Loki's eyes and follow the shape of his body down. The lower part of the image has been darkened, directing you back to the tunnel of light. Branches on the right hand side also curve back toward Loki, preventing you from leaving the photo there.
This is a relatively simple photo without a lot of "elements". We land on Peach's eyes and slide down her back, meeting a lot of darkened out bushes in the foreground. Reading left-to-right we move to the right hand side and back to the light, where we can be funneled toward her eyes again.
In this one, if we follow Loki's body, we end up at the tree and an area that has been darkened significantly to prevent exiting the image. The branches follow Loki's gazing direction, and the lower half is darkened, encouraging you to return to the tunnel of light toward his face.
This is quite subtle, and only lightly edited, but that fern to the side could help you be redirected back into the image.
I really dislike this image, and here's exactly why. It's a real mess! You land on the eyes, and then there's so much! Bright spots, ferns curving away, straight sticks leading to ferns...
Here is one version of this image, where the bokeh is the last thing in the image, giving you a nice, bright exit sign
Here is the other version, with the bokeh closed in, giving you a dark edge/frame to bounce off of and return to the dog.
This has SOME nice elements, although the bright bokeh is a problem. The red fern does curl you back toward the dog, but the pile of sticks etc is distracting, and the bright yellow grass curving to the left doesn't help.
One of my favourite images. The eyes are so clear here that they do a lot of the work on their own... but we also have a couple of curves toward the dog, and one small curve away.
Here, lots of branches curve toward Journey. One curves to the left, but meets another which curls back toward his face.
This is a weird one. The left side is darkened out, but then everything is curving and pointing right. If I can darken that right-hand side with it still looking natural, it might work.
In this one, I feel that the sharpness and the shape/angle of the fern doesn't work to curve you back inward, but ricochets you upward. It was removed in the final edit for that reason.
This one almost encourages you to leave, by following the line of the red leaves... but you hit an area of darkness, and follow the line of the plants, and the bokeh, back up to Loki.
Here is the slightly edited version of an image. I felt like her gaze was hitting the tree and not in a good way, but being blocked by it, and therefore exiting the image.
I removed the tree but darkened the area, so you would flow through the image, up and around the darkness, and back to the eyes.
In these looking forward photos, our path is less obvious. In this case, we would land on the eyes, get drawn to the pop of colour to the left, and since it's pointing away, we would quickly leave the image.
This is a weird one, and I had dismissed it as a "quick exit" image for this lesson... but then I noticed the red branch on the right leading you back in. It's not much, but it's something. The little 4-leaf thing down the bottom confuses me.
Another one with a few elements curving toward the dog. At the moment we would likely leave pretty quickly via the bokeh, but it's more or less unedited, so I would work to darken those highlights a lot more.
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