I thought it might be fun to take a break for all the disaster action and explore something a little less stressful….
I am a volunteer photographer at the Oregon Humane Society. Over the years I have taken, edited and posted thousands of images of cats (and sometimes dogs) to the OHS web site. Every picture I post has to “sell” that kitty….s/he has to look so beautiful you’ll want to take her home and make her a part of your family. As a lot of you well know, photographing cats is not easy. If they are not actively hiding from me they have what I call “lens aversion” meaning they are not going to look at me—no way, no how. Dogs in some ways are even more difficult, unless they are into sitting for treats getting them to pause even a second for a picture is next to impossible. Otherwise, they are busily running around, checking out who was in the space prior to his entry. It’s exhausting!
So believe me, I understand why taking pictures of your pets is so frustrating but it can be done! Following are a few pointers for getting better shots of your fur-babies, keep in mind I took all these pics in very tight ‘colony rooms’ with multiple cats looking on or in 2 ft. square kennels with very low light:
• Put down the cell phone and get out your camera. You can get good cell phone shots but they will likely not be of as good quality as what you can do with a good digital SLR. If a cell phone is all you have though, here are a couple of cell phone pics that work...I never use flash on my cell phone and I need to make good use of Photoshop with most cell phone pics:
I use a Nikon 7100….I don’t expect most people outside of professionals will be investing in a piece of equipment like this but a good camera is 70% of the game. You also need a fast lens, I use an f1.8 35mm lens. This allows me to shoot in relatively low light situations without using flash (no flash means no glowing laser eyes). I know, I know….all of this is really expensive! But if you have an SLR, take it out with the manual and learn how to use it. You’ll be glad you did
• Work with your camera settings. I’ve find that if I have it in ‘sports’ mode, I can open up the lens to f2.5 and shoot in bursts. I also set the ISO at 2500. I may lose detail but I’m publishing mostly on the web, not in Vogue
• An f2.5 gives me a very shallow depth of field. I think this looks good with animals, I focus for the sharpest eyes possible and let the rest fade to unfocussed (the technical term for this is ‘bokeh’). It accentuates the soft and furry nature of the animals and makes them appear all warm and cuddly
My first day of photography school at Brooks Institute of Photography, I learned two important things. First, you are responsible for every square inch of your photograph meaning seeing the pretty kitty and ignoring the pile of dirty laundry behind her does not make for a good picture. Second, go to as many art openings as possible because there’s always free food (but I digress….)
• Once you have cleared the background of clutter, have your pet look up at you and into the light, focus on her eyes. Catchlights in the eyes are so compelling! Grab your pets attention with treats, rattly toys, crackly balls, feathers, clickers, whatever it takes to get him to look at you. While I’m doing this with one hand, I have my camera up and I’m focussing on the eyes, getting ready to shoot. If they absolutely won’t give you their attention the profile or ¾ shot can also be stunning
• Take a lot of images. This isn’t like the old days where you could eat up a roll of very expensive film in minutes. Shoot like crazy...you never know when serendipity gives you a great shot
• Once you have taken a couple hundred images, it’s time to put on the art director hat. You’re going to have a lot of just snapshots but there will be 1 or 2 in every hundred images that have the potential to be magic. I’m partial to the intense stare, the come hither look, the inadvertently goofy, glowing back light. You’ll know it when you see it
• Make Photoshop or Lightbox your friend, even Apple Photos native software is pretty good. This is the point where you want to crop like crazy. No one cares about the background, they are looking at the pet. Crop close and let the pet be the center of attention. Rotate your photo so that any lines in the background are perfectly vertical or horizontal. A tilted horizon line is often distracting. Use the eraser tool to take out distracting items such as small bits of schmutz on the floor, pay particular attention to eye goobers and stray strands of drool on dogs. Use the saturation tool to make the shot look rich. If your pet is white, up the exposure to intensify the white. Your camera will try to make a white animal sort of a neutral gray. Also use the exposure tool to make sure black animals don’t look too dense….you want to see some highlights in the fur, not just a black blob with eyes
•Next, throw a vignette on your creation. It further concentrates your attention on your pet and minimizes the background
•Last but not least, play around with some of the photo painting apps available for your mobile devices. I like the painting tool called Glaze for turning my photos into Impressionist paintings
I’ll try to answer any other questions you might have. Thanks for reading! If you are interested in seeing more my web site is http://www.clsmithphotography.com
You kind find me on FaceBook at: www.facebook.com/…
and Instagram at: CLSmithPhotography
(All photos belong to CLSmithPhotography. All rights reserved)