How do we do it? - Dog photos
If you follow us on social media, then chances are you saw the dog dating profiles that we were posting during Valentine's Week. If you didn't, you should really check it out because they are quite funny - if I do say so myself.
Since posting them, I've been getting a lot of questions about how we take such good focused pictures of the dogs and what camera we use. So I'm going to let everyone in on the secrets to our dog photography.
First up, all of our photos are taken exclusively with our phones. Marjie and I have iPhones (7 plus and X). Ryan has a Galaxy S7 and Brittany has a Nexus 6. The iPhones both have Portrait Mode which can go a long way to making you look like you know what you're doing when in fact you are clueless. It requires that the subject remain still for a brief period which adds another element to the difficulty of dog photography. The S7 and Nexus 6 both have similar features that also require your dog be still. The cameras on all of these phones are so good now though that you can usually get a good photo with the basic camera and a little editing or filter goes a long way to improving the overall shot.
When taking a portrait of a single dog, it helps if they know some basic commands like sit or down. But if they don't fear not! We start by showing the dog a treat and asking for a sit. The key is to get them focused on you and the camera. Sometimes I'll hold the treat or ball above the camera to give the appearance that they are focused on looking into the camera but in reality they just want their reward. As soon as they lock eyes on the reward, snap! Instant picture success.
Single dog portraits are fun and a great way for us to showcase each dog's personality but the photos that really get us the most "wows" and "likes" are the group photos. These photos can be really fun to put together or they can be extremely frustrating. It's a good opportunity for us to work on basic obedience commands with the group but I usually end up deleting about 20 photos for every 1 that I share. The key to good group photos is remembering that you're working with animals and they aren't always going to cooperate with your vision.
For a group photo, we start with getting the dogs to sit in a group. Some dogs are better at this than others. When it comes time to put together our yearly calendar, I have to be careful to not include the same dogs on every page just because they are so cooperative and end up in almost every group shot (I'm looking at you Gunner & Lola). Once we have the group in a sit/down group, we issue the "stay" command and start to back up to get all the dogs in the frame. This is the point where chaos may ensue. Dear clients, if you want to see more group photos with your dog in them, practice "stay" at home. :) Some dogs get pulled from the photo if they keep messing it up. This is where letting go of your vision and working with what you've got comes in.
In this instance, I was going for a photo of only Golden Retrievers. Brittany was holding a bunch of other dogs off screen. Roger decided he didn't care what my vision was and he was going to sit for the photo. Fine Roger. You can be in the picture.
Once the dogs are in position in a group photo, the hardest part is getting them to hold their position AND look at the camera. The same ball/treat method above can be used but you're usually further away and sometimes they don't notice. In the woods there are about a hundred distractions at any given point. If it's a particularly windy day, forget trying to get a group shot - the creaking and rustling of trees in the wind will do you in. But we've found that we can use sounds to our advantage on getting group shots. Often times, a lot of the photos with several dogs looking at straight at the camera result from the photographer making crazy noises. Weee-oooo works well. Clicking sounds are good. Anything high pitched will certainly get the dogs' attention. Sometimes the cards just aren't in your favor though.
We've almost got it! Some of us are a little unfocused though. Let's see if we can get them focused ...
Nope! Now we've lost it completely. Photo shoot aborted.
So that's how we do it. A little patience, some training, and a lot of luck! And a good Instagram filter never hurt anyone either. ;)