"Pupparazzi" pro shares her secrets for capturing the best dog photos ever

Canine images is a enjoyable pursuit amongst pet homeowners and animal lovers, nevertheless it’s additionally an inherently difficult one. Canines don’t remain nonetheless for lengthy, which suggests your focusing and composition have to be lightning-fast.

After all, among the greatest skilled cameras (just like the Nikon Z9, the Canon EOS R5 and many extra moreover) now characteristic unbelievable animal Eye Detection AF, which helps to get topics sharp.

However nothing beats having the proper abilities and methods relating to capturing enjoyable, characterful and technically good canine photographs.

We just lately caught up with the award-winning ‘dogtographer‘ Kaylee Greer, who’s showing at The Pictures Present this yr to share her secrets and techniques for capturing the most effective canine photographs ever. Let’s examine what Kaylee needed to say.

Kaylee Greer is without doubt one of the world’s main ‘dogtographers.’ A inventive chief in her trade, she has devoted her life to telling the tales of the canine who’ve been forgotten and left behind, serving to them to get adopted.

Kaylee has been featured on Nat Geo Wild’s TV channel with a three-part Pupparazzi collection and has a e book that has just lately been printed known as ‘Dogtography’.

She may even be showing at The Pictures Present 2022 sharing recommendation on the right way to get the right pup pic!

(Picture credit score: Kaylee Greer)

What can we anticipate out of your look at The Pictures Present?

Table of Contents

For those who come dangle with me for my presentation at The Pictures Present, you can most definitely anticipate the entire following issues in droves: Colour, mild, whimsy, silliness, a dialogue concerning the deserves of peanut butter, and an countless provide of dog-hair-covered ideas and methods for crafting outrageous photographs of canine.

On the technical facet of canine images, I’ll be sharing about lenses, mild, location and digicam settings. On the tremendous duper sneaky secrets and techniques facet, I’ll be sharing about the right way to work with the canine themselves and the varied, sudden instruments that I exploit at my shoots on-location to create out of this world imagery that really captures the unbridled spirit and pleasure of your greatest good friend.It’ll be a kickin’ good time and I’m so excited to see you there!

What are your high ideas for newbie pet photographers?

I’m gonna rattle 3 of the simplest ideas I’ve up my sleeve for getting kick-butt photographs of canine, prepared?

Get Low. Altering up your perspective from the anticipated, run-of-the-mill ‘trying down at a canine from standing top’ shot, all of a sudden immerses you into your pet’s world and turns into one thing fully impactful and memorable. So get down in your canine’s eye stage and watch the magic occur.
Use enjoyable and attention-grabbing sounds. Sounds hold your canine engaged and nail some tremendous soul-meltingly, heart-explodingly endearing expressions in your imagery.Consider sounds your pup has by no means heard earlier than like a kazoo or duck name. (And right here’s my tip on high of a tip – with nice sounds come nice duty.
Use these sounds sparingly and solely while you want them to maintain them novel and attention-grabbing to your canine. Overuse of sounds, like quickly squeaking a canine toy non cease for 10 minutes, can shortly go from being enjoyable to your canine to being aggravating and overwhelming.

In different phrases, ‘Ye shall squeak solely when there may be an absolute and simple must squeak.’ For those who observe that golden rule, you’ll be in sensible form!
Put your canine up on one thing. And by ‘one thing’, I imply a log, a rock, a bench, perhaps even the arm of your sofa if he’s sufficiently small.These components can help you get your canine up off the bottom (the place he’s very distracted and busy with necessary issues to do like pee on the world and eat cool sticks) and helps him focus in your digicam with extra intention whereas holding his keep just a bit bit longer than if he had been floor stage.
This offers you a number of extra seconds to wipe the canine drool off your lens and actually nail a fur-covered picture masterpiece.

What digicam package do you utilize and why?

I’ve fairly actually – only a few weeks in the past – upgraded to the Canon EOS R3 mirrorless system from my earlier Canon 1DX MK III.This digicam has completely blown my socks off my toes and straight into the sky. The pace is mind-bending, and extremely helpful for very fast paced, continually wiggling four-legged topics.

However even higher than that? Effectively, I solely must say three, game-changing phrases:Animal. Eye. Autofocus.