There’s an easy answer to that, and several tough ones. Understand that black and white are the extremes, the left and right of the spectrum your camera can record. Most modern digital cameras, in fact, are pre-programmed to help you keep the detail in those extremes, particularly the whites. This means that if you just pull out your camera set to auto, on a sunny day, the camera will likely under-expose the image to preserve the white fur detail, while under-exposing the black fur in the face. You’ll have nice whites, but a black blob where the face should be.

You can see this happen to an extreme when there’s snow on the ground, again a result of the camera’s limited brain. With all of the white snow dominating the camera’s view, it assumes that it can’t possibly be all white as that so rarely happens. The camera thinks it must be gray, instead. So, the exposure defaults to that assumption, and you get gray snow, and yet again, a black blob for a dog. The solution? You have to learn to over-ride the camera’s brain, by reading the manual and figuring out how to let in more light, either by enlarging the aperture (f-stop), or lengthening the amount of time the shutter is open.

But with the whites under control, what about the blacks? Tricky! Now that we’ve subtracted some light, we have to add some back in where the blacks are. Usually this would be through use of flash or strobe, or even a large, white “bounce” card, and by “card,” I mean you can use up to 7-foot long pieces of foamcore from  Home Depot. A solution, but not very practical when on a picnic.

Or, you can go the digital route, and take care of some of it on the computer. This first image shows a black and white chihuahua, and from the sparkle in her eye you can see the main, key studio light was positioned to the left. It opened up the blacks on her face, but where her paws and fur were close to the light, the whites were “blown out” without detail.

On the left, the white fur has no detail. the exposure was set to register the black in her face.

So, in Photoshop or a similar program, you can re-build the lost detail in a few ways. One would be to “borrow” fur from an area that does have detail, and clone it into the areas that don’t offer any at all. In this case, I borrow from the blue circled area, and clone it in where the yellow circles are as well as the surrounding areas, all the way to the paws, adding detail. It’s a cheat, but it’s a solution.

Just add back some detail in the yellow circles with your software, borrowing from the blue area, where the exposure captured the fine fur.

But lastly, let’s first look at the easiest answer: wait. Wait for a cloudy day, or when you can get that open shade we discussed in my post on photographing black dogs. With just a little fill-flash from your camera (set it to low), you can open up the shadows in the black fur while preserving the evenly-lit whites. Voila. In a really uneven scenario, you can also use your software to pull out shadows and reduce highlights, but in the case below with the bulldogs below? All we needed was shade, with the brightest part of the sky behind the subjects to reduce burnout of the whites, yet let us see the black noses’ and lips’ detail. Piece of cake.

Open shade lets the camera even out the exposure.

The image above offers a peek into the life of a show-winning lab, who when given the opportunity is a contender for the World’s Best Couch Potato (she’s earned it with all of her ribbons!).  So, while it’s certainly an awesome thing to have shots of your dog or cat that display all of their ability in agility, their prowess in the ring, or their perfect musculature? Sometimes, the best picture just shows off the pet you know and love most.

Take some time with your camera near at hand to grab those candid and decisive moments that you’ll always cherish and associate with your pet. Try processing them in black and white, and don’t shoot for anything fancy, but remember your rules of composition (note the eye placement in this image, as mentioned in another post here) while playing with various angles. You’d be surprised how many keepers you can get!

If you can isolate the cat in a container or box, or even on a chair or stool, your odds of a keeper will increase.

Tis the season, absolutely. Last  weekend we spent a few days at North Shore Animal League America  making holiday-themed images for donors to the shelter. We had plenty of props, lots of space, and a wonderfully organized list of clients to pop in and have their beloved pets photographed for keepsakes and greeting cards.

With every pet, you have to not only keep control as much as possible, but also get lucky…the trick is to increase the odds on the luck part. One kitten is often tough, as they’re so spritely - but two? You have to click the shutter on the camera the instant their eyes are looking into the light…cat’s eyes just glow when they’re hit with light directly, but dim when the aren’t. To help our odds, we isolated these two beauties in the container to keep them more immobile. While we were using an elaborate setup of strobes and diffusers, you can do this near a window or in a garage with the door open, too, keeping the light directional and coming from behind your camera position.

When shooting images for greeting cards, you want to keep it simple, and let the pet fill the frame in the image. Otherwise, unless you’re very careful with prop preparation, you’ll end up with a greeting card that shows a dog that’s only 1/4″ tall.

Fill the frame with your pet, and don\'t forget to use a squeaky to to help get those ears up!

So, I cropped in tightly here, and my elf Elyse went nuts with the noisemakers right behind my head. On cue, and thankfully predictably, our pup shot his ears up and cocked his head in curiosity. CLICK!

When you start putting more than one pet in a shot, your odds of getting an image with all of the animals looking so that you can see their eyes go down, and down quickly. But, this trio below more than cooperated, they were brilliantly marvelous. Also, we were very, very lucky.

While wearing cute collars to represent Christmas and winter, we banged out a series of amazing shots of these guys with no hassle whatsoever. This was thanks to an extra set of hands, which are always helpful - and usually necessary  - when making pet photographs. When a dog that has had any training is repeatedly placed back into position and told to “Stay,” it’s only a matter of time before the pup catches on and stays at least long enough for a quick photograph. So, remember  - this is a game of patience. You’re likely going to spend 20 minutes trying to get just that one shot, but in the end, it’s so worth it!

Happy Holidays!

Nothing like a romp to get that panting smile!

Quizzical look! A gym whistle did the trick.

However, there are a few staples I’m sure to capture when runnign the gamut, and that includes both the “quizzical” look as well as the “smile.”

To get that head-cocked, eyes fixed, adorable shot, all you need is a noisemaker of some kind. I bring lots to every set (though sometimes my stock dwindles, as I’m known to leave a few behind if a pup loves it). This might be a gym whistle, a squeaky toy, and then there’s my favorite - an electronic howler monkey. It never fails. Just hold the noisemaker in your hand that’s supporting the camera, or have the owner set it off right over your head while you’re shooting.

To get that big smile, just follow the above tip after you’ve just run the dog a bit, or played around - it’s a simple matter of just enough exercise to get him panting, which readily translates to a grin in the photo.

In this case, the more light you have for action, the better. . .this lets your shutter speed increase, and you’ll want it as fast as it can get, say at 1/250 sec. and higher.  The less time that shutter is open, the less time a subjectwill have to blur. Make sense?

Your first approach should be to position yourself between the subject and the light source, likely the sun - this will allow the most light, and reduce shadow areas. A mid-to-late sun is great, say, after 2:00 p.m. so that it’s a lower, directional light.

Then, you’ll want to have the widest aperture you can have with your camera or lens - in most cases this will be f5.6 -f 1.8. From there, just increase the ISO (sensitivity) of your digital camera until you’re sure you’re getting shutter speeds above 1/250 of a second. A tripod helps, as usual - but regardless, you should be great with just the above and be able to bring home some great shots of your action-packed day!

A mid-high to low directional sun helps provide the light you need to freeze the action.

Remember to set your camera's autofocus to continuous, too!

An easy and visually pleasing way to make your subject “pop” when you’re composing is to make sure you’re complimenting your pet’s coloring. If it’s a light-colored dog, try a dark background. If it’s a dark colored dog, try a light background. There are some great “any dog” backgrounds, too, such as green or red.

The dark-colored sofa lets the lighter dog 'pop' and pull your attention in.

We discussed the placement of the pet’s face or eyes on the first part of this entry, but what if you want a “long” shot that isn’t a tight portrait? In that case, make sure you’re keeping that camera level with the pet – don’t shoot from above. That way, you can incorporate elements of the foreground to give your composition more depth.

By shooting at dog's-eye level and incorporating the grass, the composition is anchored.

Lastly, keep in mind that you should always allow some space for your subject to “move into.” If the dog is facing to the left, make sure there’s some empty space to the left for him to “look into.” This counts for looking up, down, and especially when running or playing. Give it a try!

With this Maine Coon's eyes placed on the upper-right 1/3 line and her head angled to the side a little, I allowed some space on the left in the composition so she can 'look into' the area.

These “rules” of composition, remember, were made to be broken, too. Don’t ever be afraid of breaking rules! As photography legend Edward Weston once said, “Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk.” Breaking the rules just might take your photos to even greater heights!

Composition rules (and even in photography, rules are made to be broken!) work to tell a story. When viewing a photo, your eyes will first settle on the picture’s point of main interest. In our case, this will usually be the eyes of our dogs in a tight portrait, or the dog itself in a pulled-back action shot. From there, the visual story continues, and our eye travels through the frame to the rest of the photo’s elements. The point to remember here is that a story – or a photograph – that creates some “tension” is always a more interesting one.

Many cameras provide a grid overlay for guiding compositions.

To start your visual story, viewers will first look at the dog's face. Try placing it on a rule-of-thirds line to offer a nice compositional start.

It's ok to tell less of a story and leave empty space, such as the grass - the dog's face is in the upper one-third corner of the shot on a line intersection, providing visual tension.

I’ve been happily wearing through camera shutters with my pet portraits and pet stock photography for nearly five years now, and haven’t looked back once. Between my love of the animals and the joy I see in the owners and clients as they gaze with pride at their pet’s new, in-print celebrity, I’m really glad that I found such a fun and interesting niche in photography. My goal is always the same – have fun with it, love the subjects, and aim to portray my subject with a great, honest, emotive portrait.

I’ll freely admit that getting into pet photography was an accident for me. The “accident” started when, with no human models to assist me with my portrait lighting practice and experimentation, I persuaded my dog to step onto my set. It was there that I found that getting the right amount of specular highlights in the fur, and an attractive catch light in well-lit, colorful eyes made a pretty big difference in the portrait’s outcome. I continued to play with the lighting formulas, adjusting to the smaller-than-usual, furry subject, until I found I had some looks I loved – looks with a difference from what I saw on the local pet photography market. I found I knew I disliked the forced-pose portraits against cheesy blue, crumpled sheet backdrops. I also knew I didn’t enjoy shooting photos of pets (or people!) being told to sit and stay, with the animal’s ears skinned against its head in fright.

Photographing a pet may seem like an easy and fun thing to do, but the reality is that shooting pets successfully is a cross between the challenge of shooting weddings and kids. Things move quickly and rarely in the direction you expect. It’s a perilous environment for your equipment, too. Lights get knocked over, accidents happen on the backdrop, and props rarely survive more than a few sittings (I won’t describe to you what happened to one of my favorite Tenba camera bags). The pet photographer has to be prepared to shoot anything from a lovebird to a St. Bernard, offering fur and feather that span the full tonal range, and behaviors that range from perfect manners to pure insanity. It’s not for everyone. Instead, looking beyond many preconceived notions about pet portraiture, I often shoot for the “classic” looks I try to create with my portraits of children, though with four-legged subjects. When I shoot pets, I want Rembrandt-style lighting and coordinated, accenting color palettes. I want edge lighting to separate the subject from the background. I want character, and I want to draw an emotional response with the prints headed for my client’s walls or magazine and book pages. It doesn’t have to always be that complex, but your options when photographing pets do allow you a lot of flexibility and creativity!

It takes a while to get the hang of pet photography, especially because you’re not always working with a subject that takes direction well. Note that some pets do just sit and stay on their own, and when they do, it’s wonderful – it looks natural, and we know the animal isn’t getting stressed out, something to constantly be concerned about (their comfort takes a high priority – never sacrifice an animal’s comfort for “that shot”). This lets us go after the quizzical look, the panting “smile,” or the somber, discerning gaze. I personally like to go after what’s sure to be recognized as a familiar expression to the owner. Pets can’t hide their emotions, and anyone that’s spent any time with animals – especially their owners - can read that in the final photographic print.

The real challenge is encouraging and capturing the natural, fun-loving behaviors in a studio setting, or in a home setting, creating interesting compositions that hopefully appeal to any viewer, not just the pet owner. I think finding a connection, or a spark, between the subject and the lens is the goal of most portrait photographers whether the subject has two legs, four legs, or feathers.

To find this relationship, I find it’s all about getting down and dirty to play a little, and evoking the mood from the pets – particularly the dogs and cats. Greeting them as enthusiastically as you get ready and setting a mood or pace is almost integral to a successful shoot. More than once, packing up, I’ve had an owner remark, “It’s obvious you love what you’re doing,” commenting on the fun and smiles shared with the pet, the questions I’ve asked about them, and the praise I’ve poured over them throughout the process. Really, this is something every living subject I photograph needs to hear and feel from us – it makes an incredible difference across the board – but I know for certain it comes through with the animals, who make no attempt to hide how they’re feeling during the shoot. So, as a pet photographer, it’s not just important, but absolutely necessary to have an understanding of animal behavior and the unique relationship between pets and their humans. Without that, all a photographer can hope for is a technically well-executed snap shot.

Our thinking here will follow as such: in a day and age where nearly no one leaves the house without a compact digital camera in their pocket or purse (or certainly on their cell phone), the hobby of photography has grown to the point where there is always a photo opportunity to be seized with our pets, and these blog entries will address a few tips and tricks that aim to make you enjoy your pet picture-making all the more. We’re going to get a little technical sometimes, but it’s impossible not to without the potential of your not understanding the “why” of what we’re doing. If we’re going to explain it, we’ll do it all the way. Are you on board? Great!

My first entry addresses one of the most common questions I receive about pet photography: “How do you make a good image of a dark-colored or black dog? Mine always come out too dark.”

Take a look at Photo 1, posted below. Look familiar?

Photo 1. The good news: You have a million photos like this, documenting 12 years of your pet’s life. The bad news: Thumb-tacked to the side of your cubicle at the office, it gives the impression Martha Stewart’s evil twin decorated your work area.

I used to make a hundred of these shots a year, too. I’d put the camera on “Auto” (a setting it was always on anyway) and click away. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the best option. Let’s look at a few earmarks of this common pet snapshot:

-I’m standing over the pet when I make the shot. This provides a not-so-wonderful, top-down view. It’s a view we’re familiar with, so there’s context, but would you stand over your child, or new car, to make such photos?

-I’ve chosen to make the image where the dog happened to be at the time, not in a setting of any particular choice. Unless, that is, a beat-up gray porch is your idea of a fine aesthetic.

- The camera fired its flash, and the startled subject, who was staring right into the lens and had the light illuminate the blood vessels in his retinas…causing the dreaded “red eye.” (*Note that this only happens when the flash is on the same physical plane as the lens, as is the case with most compact digital cameras – it’s about half an inch above the lens. If the flash is higher, like that on the camera of the guy in the bad tux who photographed your cousin’s wedding, you’ll be ok).

Let’s look at the above three issues separately, and see what we can do to avoid them.

Tip #1: Get down to eye level

-I’ll address this point over and over through the course of this blog, but now’s as good a time as any to start reinforcing the tip: get down to your pet’s eye level! Drop at least to one knee, and even lower than that if you can (or, elevate the pup a little). The perspective makes a huge difference in the quality of the portrait. Yes, you can shoot from above sometimes and get an amazing photograph, and sometimes that perspective is even brilliantly artistic. But for now, start shooting from your pet’s perspective – and see how much of a difference that can make. While we’re on the topic, especially in reference to the image shown here, level the camera out, too – tilted horizons in photos are usually a distraction.

Tip #2: Choose your setting, don’t let your setting choose you

A poorly featured setting or environment does nothing to help a photograph. It creates what photographers refer to as “visual clutter,” and distracts the viewer from the image’s true subject: your pet. Our example not only includes our pet, but the porch…and the porch desperately needs some paint. Why not move the dog into a more brightly-lit area? Maybe by some flowers, or out on the lawn? That way, the viewer sees just the dog and the surroundings you chose for nice image.

Tip #3: Learn how your camera works, and why

As a photographer, I’m often handed a friend’s camera and asked how it does “this or that.” I usually reply that I’m happy to help them figure it out, but at this stage of the game I often can’t resist a dig, too, and ask pointedly, “What does your camera manual say about it?” The answer, 99% of the time, is, “…I don’t know, I didn’t read it, and don’t have it with me.” Folks, I’m begging you - read the manual. Understand how your camera does what it does, and why. I used to be in technical writing, and can appreciate how dry that camera manual is, but you have to read it and digest it. The features of your particular camera are unique to it alone, and with new lines of cameras coming out every month of the year it’s unlikely any two will be all the same. Therefore, if you want to make better photographs with your gear, it’s imperative to understand how it works… and why it does what it does. I mean it. Do it now, read the manual. Twice.

Why your black dog is a dark blob

Do you want to know why your black dog shots always come out so dark? In the case of our first photograph, the reason is that the camera has used its internal light meter – yours has one too - to “read” the scene, and make a best guess at the exposure. This scene in particular is a tough guess for a computer chip, as the shingles are white, which are at one end of the tonal spectrum. The porch is gray, a “middle tone.” Our dog, of course, is nearly all black. That’s the full spectrum of tonality, from black to white, and a tough call for any in-camera light meter – especially when the majority of the viewfinder shows the black dog, which the camera takes into account. The camera wants to keep detail in the white shingles, which lets the gray porch fall into line with no problem. But then, there’s that large, black blob of dog in the middle, and the result is a big blast of flash to compensate. The end-result is what you see.

Does that mean the camera made a mistake? Certainly not! It did what it needed to do to properly expose the scene by its best guess. But, it didn’t really flatter our dog when combined with the photo’s other facets. So, let’s look at some things we can do better next time.

Leave the flash for the Paparazzi

First of all, with black dogs, let’s lose that flash. The flash is adding light to make the exposure better, compensating for the large mass of black fur in the viewfinder - but often we can find our own “extra” light outside. I have two favorite kinds of light. My first and favorite choice is “golden” light, or “sweet light,” light which occurs during the first and last ninety minutes of every day. It’s directional, too, coming from low in the sky. If you put yourself between that light source and your subject (check to see that your shadow makes a line right towards your subject), you’re good without my writing much more. Try it! But, if I can’t be outside during those hours, or the sun is behind clouds, my second favorite kind of light is shade. Nice, even shade. Find an evenly-lit area, say, behind the north side of a building or under a porch. Shadows disappear, and the subject will be softly lit. Even better if it’s a bright but overcast sky, then everything’s in shade.

Now that we’ve found our light, and folks, it’s all about the light, let’s turn off the flash to the camera (hint: how to do this is in the manual!). The camera will now be forced to calculate exposure knowing it can’t add artificial light itself, and we’re not worried about the demonic red-eye effect anymore. (***In the shade, though, you may not have enough light to hand-hold the camera without inducing blur – so be prepared to brace the camera on a chair, the floor, or a table. Better yet, invest in a tripod – I never go anywhere without one).

The only catch now is that your camera, while it’s smart, it isn’t Einstein. With the meter in the camera trying to figure out the exposure with our big black dog as the subject, we may have to override some of the generic “Auto” settings you usually shoot with. We’re going to dive into that manual again, and adjust the camera’s settings so that it adds a longer exposure to the photo automatically, which will let detail show in that dark fur. First thing: Find the ISO setting. . .that tells the camera how sensitive to light you want it to be. Set it on Auto, where it likely already is. You can read up on how these settings now effect your camera’s operation and the photo quality, but the important thing for right now is that you’ve ditched the flash and tweaked the settings to shoot well without it.

Only one more thing to do: look in the manual on how to add exposure compensation. With a black dog, I find that just a little positive compensation is ok sometimes, but a lot of compensation is needed other times – it depends on the camera, and on the brightness of the light. See if you can figure out how to add “+0.3 to +1.0” in compensation. This tells the camera that you want to just shoot normally without any fuss, but that you would like it to automatically compensate for a dark subject by adding more light (in this case, the measure of exposure units in photography) to the photo. Again, we do this because the camera might not be smart enough to know that we want to see detail in that black fur. Understanding the “why” here is to understand your camera’s light metering…it wants to make you a nice picture, so it looks for a mid-tone, like the porch’s gray wood in Photo #1(or a deep blue sky, or green grass, for example) to be “the middle” of the tone of which it bases its exposure. A big, black subject can fool the meter and may trick it into thinking that’s a mid tone instead of a tone at the dark end of the spectrum. That’s bad. So, we add exposure compensation.

Here we are encapsulated:

-Turn off the flash

-Set camera to Auto ISO

-Add in +0.3 to +1.0 exposure compensation to brighten the final photo

Photo 2 illustrates a shot in shade, in a parking lot at NSALA. I haven’t dialed in any exposure compensation, so the dog is too dark, under-exposed by the camera. The camera took a guess, and blew it.

Photo 2: A middle-tone is a color between the extremes, between white and black – about 18% gray. The camera is having trouble figuring out what a middle-tone is in this scene, because it sees a big, black dog instead of the usual subject matter - skin (it prioritizes light tones and highlights, too, such as bright white. See any here? Me neither!). The problem is that the camera can’t know there really isn’t an actual mid-tone as a main subject, as we have a black dog - and the camera makes assumptions. The red leash is fairly mid-toned, sure, but there isn’t enough of it in the scene for the camera to decide it’s a priority in the exposure, so it ignores it. It’s the weight of the reading that counts in most cases – and mostly, here, we have nothing but a black dog for the camera to base the exposure.

Photo 3 shows my adjustment for the shot, where I tweaked the camera settings to add exposure compensation without using flash. The camera adjusts the f-stop and the shutter speed, letting in more light per my instruction, and bingo! We have a much better exposure. We can see our subject’s fur in detail now, and the shot looks a lot closer to what our eye is seeing.

Photo 3: A positive exposure compensation setting lets the camera adjust the amount of light coming in, adding more to the exposure and making a brighter photo. You might need a stable platform or tripod to pull this off in shade, as you may not be able to hold the camera still enough during the exposure to not blur the image.

Get Down!

Now that we’re using our camera like a tool instead of a magical problem solver, we’re ready to address the way we compose the shot. Photography is many things, including a matter of perspective – figuratively, of course - but also literally depending on where we point it. Remember we’re in a parking lot making this particular shot, not a beautiful meadow or a prop-laden studio. So what can we do to make a “prettier” photo?

First of all, let’s lose that parking lot blacktop. Let’s go back to Tip #1, and get down to the dog’s eye level. This way, especially if we’re careful about framing, the camera will only record what’s behind him, not what’s beneath him. Wanting to keep the background non-distracting and completely without clutter that might distract the viewer from our handsome pup’s face, I spotted an empty wall – it’s the side of a building. It was one solid color, a bonus. In your immediate area, this “wall” might be a hedge of green bushes, the side of the house, an above-ground pool, or even a long, empty field, showing “nothingness” beyond your subject. The catch here is that you can’t be right up against the background. Put as much distance as you can between the subject and that blank wall or hedge – I’m most comfortable with 25+ yards. This way, when we frame the subject, the focus will be “tight,” and everything beyond your pet will blur into a creamy smooth, non-distracting background.

Compose with thought

Now we’re ready to shoot, and that brings us to how we will compose in the viewfinder or the LCD screen on the back of the camera. Earlier, we discussed how so much of the porch’s visible environment contributed to the ruination of Photo 1. The zoom was backed out on Photo 1, allowing us to see the porch in our attempt to show the entire dog from head-to-tail. Do we really need to show all of Fido? Of course not! What if we just composed our image so that we had just a sweet, close-up face shot, capturing that personality and emotion we love so much? Zooming in tightly like that, especially with the solid background so far away, further emphasizes the out-of-focus surroundings and leaves your pet as the point of interest, as in Photo 4.

Photo 4: We’re almost there! We’ve tightly framed our dog in the viewfinder, with the dog’s face filling most of the frame. . .and the building wall, a good 25 yards behind our subject, goes “soft” and out of focus. Our dog is now properly exposed, with the detail in his fur visible, and as there’s no clutter as we’re pulled into the photo by our human eye’s tendency to settle on the most contrast in an image…in this case, his smile and his eyes! Note that he’s smack in the middle of the photo, with his eyes in the upper 1/3 of the image. Placing the eyes in the upper 1/3 creates a nice compositional balance.

I was happy enough at this point, but wanted just one more try at holding the camera steadier to get the shot sharper – especially around the dog’s eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul, they say, so it’s always best in any kind of portraiture if they’re the sharpest, most in-focus part of the shot. Also, it’s a good thing if they’re on the edge of the image, about 1/3 of the way in from any edge (reference “rule of thirds” or “golden mean” on Google, or check back in on this blog later).

To vary things up a little, too, we slid to the left about 40 feet, to use a blue storage container as the background instead of that wall. That leash was awfully distracting, too, so we removed it. I braced the elbow of the hand I was cradling the camera with into my chest tightly for support, held my breath to keep steady, and made a few more tightly-composed shots. Satisfied his eyes were sharp with this technique, I did just one last thing – I moved his face a bit to the left in the frame. With his smiling mug now off-center, the image has a little bit of compositional flair to it and I’m all done!

Photo 5: We have detail in the black fur due to our exposure compensation, a shot devoid of clutter, and we’re down at eye level creating an engaging portrait. Our black dog proved no problem once we turned off that camera flash and added exposure compensation! Note how we pulled the leash down so it’s no longer in the image, and also, check out how the open sky behind my shooting position reflects in the dog’s eyes, how it adds to the image as it prevents him from looking like a lifeless, black-eyed doll or toy.

Do you have any questions or find yourself in need of tips regarding the photography of your North Shore Animal League America pet? Send us an email about it, and we’ll do our best to address your questions!