Top 9 tips on Pet Photography

You need to relax and not be too anxious about anything. Remember that your pets can sense your mood. If you get anxious and tensed, they will get anxious too, and not be their normal self. A stressed out pet will give you a cornered eye, flattened ear and a sad look, which is not what you are expecting to click. Relax, take a deep breath and then proceed. It is one of the best feelings when you can have fun while clicking your darling pet.

Remember that you can play a lot when it comes to eye detailing. Pets are curious creatures, so they are very expressive. You can achieve amazing portraits when you focus on their expressions. A well-timed puppy can actually look into the camera when you don’t expect and give the perfect expression you are looking for, if you wait and have the patience. Frustrationdoesn’t work with them.. Sadly!

Even before you pull out your DSLR, try and check if your house is a mess. If it is, bid a goodbye to the photo shoot and keep it for another day. Do you see your unwashed plates, grocery items lying around and clothes in your pet picture? No right? Then, clean it up! If the element in the background doesn’t deserve to be there in the picture, just clean it and remove it. Aesthetic appeal is the most important because pets are not going to stay in one place and pose for you. They will keep moving and running.

Capture their world and go with the flow. Don’t force them to be and react in your world. That wouldn’t work at all. Walk with them, run behind them and capture in what they look cute. Recreating a world for them inside your home is fine, but take them out and see what attracts them more. Capture them playing in the sand and explore their emotions. Finding out what looks good in their world can be challenging, but when you achieve it, the happiness in you will double. Teaching them some trickswhile training them would be a huge advantage when it comes to pet photography

You need to accept the fact that pet photography is a huge deal that can cause you real aches after you are done with the shoot. Yes, let’s face it, investing a lot of time and body, you have to literally run behind your pets, capture what they see, what they play with. If you have been idle for a looooong time now, this could be your exercise. You need at least an entire weekend to achieve a perfect album dedicated just for your pets.

Every animal needs to be motivated to pay attention to you when you are asking it to pose for you. If you know the tactics on what they are interested in, your work becomes easier. If your puppy likes to chew the bone continuously, just give it to him and let him enjoy. He sure will listen to you the next time you ask him for something. For cats, you can bribe them using tuna fish, cat nips etc, but remember, unlike dogs, cats are not all that flexible. You have to know their pulse.

Yes, when you know that you are not going to hurt him, it is fine to fool them sometimes. Pets don’t know that they are getting fooled. They think that they are decision makers here. Whereas, it is you who is deciding his actions by motivating or bribing him. Reward your models and create a concept out of it. Make a story and be creative when you want to be.

With dogs, you can always make them move according to your speed. Dogs are loving animals who are more tolerable than cats when it comes to listening to you. Cats are not that easy. They need to tamed accordingly and in their own time. Moving fast with cats might get risky since they may not always listen to you. There are radical changes of expressions in cats, so moving slow here works better.

You need to be extremely patient when it comes to pet photography. Yes, you might be super excited and then probably even shift from being excited to get bored on no improvisation, but patience is a virtue. He will get used to the fact that something other than you is looking at him and will start reacting slowly. So be patient!

-Pavithra Ravi