Friday, April 17, 2009
Training Tip - Photographing Pets
All too often we take a photo of a pet, be it a dog or a cat, and here we are shooting the photo from a standing position. Towering above this small creature from 5 to 6 feet up, and end up wondering why our photos do not look like others we see.
Photographing pets is really easy, but take a tip from a dear friend of mine, Millie Latimer, as I did years back. Start shooting your photos from down on the dogs level. Yes, that may mean kneeling, squatting, and sometimes even laying on the ground, but if you want to get professional results that leave you with beautiful photos to last a lifetime, then you have to change the angle.
Try this, shoot the same photo from two angles. The first shot standing and the second shot from down on their level. Now look at the photos and see for yourself the difference this makes. Look at these two photos I took of my puppies, see the difference.
Another quick tip: When shooting any photo, crop the photo with your lens, not your computer. Photographs are comprised of thousands and thousands of pixels. All these pixels make up the photo. The more pixels, the crisper and sharper the photo is. When you use the computer to crop the photo, you loose pixels, when you do this you get what is referred to as pixelation which degredates the photo making it all grainy. Use your lens instead. If you have a zoom lens, zoom in close on the subject matter, filling the view finder with what it is you are trying to photograph. All the excess objects and stuff all around the subject matter are not relevant in most situations, so why include them in the photograph. If you do not have a zoom, simply walk up closer to the subject if possible.
These simple steps will help you produce professional looking photographs that all your friends will be envious of.
I am not a professional photographer by trade, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Photographing pets is really easy, but take a tip from a dear friend of mine, Millie Latimer, as I did years back. Start shooting your photos from down on the dogs level. Yes, that may mean kneeling, squatting, and sometimes even laying on the ground, but if you want to get professional results that leave you with beautiful photos to last a lifetime, then you have to change the angle.
Try this, shoot the same photo from two angles. The first shot standing and the second shot from down on their level. Now look at the photos and see for yourself the difference this makes. Look at these two photos I took of my puppies, see the difference.
Another quick tip: When shooting any photo, crop the photo with your lens, not your computer. Photographs are comprised of thousands and thousands of pixels. All these pixels make up the photo. The more pixels, the crisper and sharper the photo is. When you use the computer to crop the photo, you loose pixels, when you do this you get what is referred to as pixelation which degredates the photo making it all grainy. Use your lens instead. If you have a zoom lens, zoom in close on the subject matter, filling the view finder with what it is you are trying to photograph. All the excess objects and stuff all around the subject matter are not relevant in most situations, so why include them in the photograph. If you do not have a zoom, simply walk up closer to the subject if possible.
These simple steps will help you produce professional looking photographs that all your friends will be envious of.
I am not a professional photographer by trade, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
# posted by Clay Black @ 7:31 AM 
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