Every pet is unique, be it a cat, budgie, dog, cat, rabbit or parrot. They have their own unique personality and are usually full of surprises, giving their owners plenty of shots to fill up the memory on their phones. Chances are, if you have a pet, you will have a digital photo album filled with snaps. Most of those could be great for a pet collage print, but if you want a picture framed that is larger than a 7” x 5” or 6” x 4”, you will probably find it harder getting the quality up to a decent standard so that it doesn’t look sub-par when it’s blown up to a 10 x 8 or larger.
Rather than settling for a collection of smaller photos, learn the tricks the pros use to snap stunning pet photographs in the right light conditions, in the best environments, and the one thing you can do to capture your pets’ personality in print.
3 Pet Photography Tips that Don’t Need a Pro Photographer
- Capture your pet in motion
It used to be that you needed a DSLR camera or some sort of action camera to capture in-motion photos, such as a dog chasing a ball, or a kitten trying to paw a red dot on the carpet being beamed from a laser pen.
Action cameras will still get you better photos of moving objects, however, the quality from cameras on mobile phones can be just as detailed, without the blurred shadow caused by the motion on older camera models.
For taking photos of pets in motion, always use the fastest speed your camera has. The slower your shutter speed is set, the higher the likelihood is of your photos being affected by camera shake, and that results in blurriness. In particular, around the edges, which in the case of pet photos on-the-move, it’s usually a blurry shadow.
- Shoot in Natural Light at Specific Times
Professional photographers with studios have one advantage you are unlikely to have and that’s natural light that they control. For the rest of us shooting our own photos at home, we are really relying on natural light and not faking it with multiple studio quality LED lights, green screens, light reflectors, and numerous other pro photography gear. Indoors, we have windows and doors and a flash feature on the camera.
When you are restricted to natural light, the best time of day for photographing is shortly after sunrise and not long before sunset. Photographers refer to these times as the golden hour of the day when the natural light isn’t too harsh, nor too dull. If you want to shoot a pet portrait, those are the best times.
For indoor photographs, take advantage of window blinds to control the direction of sunlight entering the room. Ideally, try to have it angled away from where you plan to take the photos, otherwise, you might just snap a white photo with a shadowy figure as the main object. Side-lighting works best.
- Take the Photo at Multiple Angles
This is the one thing that captures your pet’s personality; the angle of the shot. Either head-on or angled slightly upwards works best. Not downwards with your pet looking up with a weird look wondering what you are up to with that thing on your hand.
Not many of us are blessed with pet whispering talents, able to teach our pets to sit on command and wait in their pose until you decide you have mastered the camera and are happy with the photo you took. The best pet photos are those that capture their personalities, and the best time to capture those types of photos are when they are active.
To get the most details in your photo, position yourself at the same height as your pet. For kittens, that may mean trying to shoot the photo while lying on the floor and for larger breeds of dogs, it may mean kneeling.
A huge advantage of digital cameras is that you will never run out of film. You might run out of memory but you can always make more by deleting some photos or add another memory card. Use that to your advantage and take as many photos as you can. You may set out trying to capture that one good photo for a larger framed print and end up with a larger pet collage frame instead, each of them looking like they have been taken by a pro!