Thoughts on Pet Photography

Would you like to know my thoughts on pet pho­tog­ra­phy? Here you go. Pet pho­tog­ra­phy must be the hard­est type of pho­tog­ra­phy in the world. I bet there are com­bat pho­tog­ra­phers who will look at this lit­tle ball of fur and ask to go back to war instead of deal­ing with him. Either that, or the folks doing pet pho­tog­ra­phy have much more mild man­nered ani­mals at their dis­posal than I do. Don’t be fooled by his cute appear­ance. Cute­ness is a defense mech­a­nism given to young ani­mals so they can get away with acts of terrorism.

This is Milo, my new puppy. After my dog Humphrey passed, I was dis­ap­pointed that I never really got any decent pho­tos of him. Now that I’ve exper­i­mented a tad with pet pho­tog­ra­phy, I may no longer regret those lost shots. The pho­tog­ra­phy part is easy. It’s the pet that sends cold chills down my spine.

When I men­tioned that pet pho­tog­ra­phy was hard, Ken Toney tried to tell me that baby pho­tog­ra­phy was harder. Non­sense. Babies just cry. I’ve never met a baby that tried to eat my lens hood.

If you want to talk about dif­fi­cult mod­els, Milo is the poster child. He didn’t have a tantrum. Quite the oppo­site, he was full of bound­less energy and hap­pi­ness. He was so happy that he leaped through the air into my set. Much like Super­man plow­ing through a build­ing, Milo lunged with legs stretched for­ward into my white V-​Flats. He dis­cov­ered that slid­ing on the white tile­board was fun. Keep­ing in sync with the puppy rules that dic­tate every­thing must fit into his mouth, he went after my cam­era as I com­posed shots. Basi­cally, he did every­thing except sit still for a millisecond.

That’s when I got the bright idea of just putting down a food dish to see if he’d stay put. It sort of worked. His first reac­tion was to pounce in it. Kib­ble exploded across my set like shrap­nel from a grenade. Great. More stuff to clean up before I could take the shot.

Then he finally plopped down to eat. Oddly enough, this posi­tion is exactly how Milo eats. He just lies down on his belly and puts at least one paw in the bowl (some­times two) and goes to town. To get this shot, I needed a low angle and put my cam­era on the floor. It’s truly a pain in the neck to look through the viewfinder at this kind of low angle. Once I focused on his eye, I set the focus lock and then just started watch­ing for moments to click the shutter.

The set was very sim­ple. I used a pair of white 4×8 foam core boards taped together for back­ground and fill. There was white tile board under him. The only light was my Elinchrom BXRi 500 with a 53″ Midi Octa box on the right side. I’ll try again out­side to get a nat­ural set­ting, but the high key setup was sup­posed to be quick and sim­ple. To be fair, the set was quick and sim­ple. It’s the dog that brought all the complications.

Milo is actu­ally a very sweet and lov­ing puppy, but he’s also dri­ving me crazy with his energy and end­less abil­ity to chew every­thing in sight. While work­ing on the com­puter last night, I heard a crash in the liv­ing room. He pulled out an elec­tri­cal cord and dragged a table lamp across my liv­ing room and was head­ing to my office. My power sup­ply for the Mac­book Pro no longer works. Ear­lier yes­ter­day, he grabbed the gui­tar cable plugged into my Line 6 pedal board and slung it from one side of the liv­ing room to another. He does all of this with glee.

That’s my begin­ning with a nearly 3 month-​old puppy that arrived here Sun­day evening. He’s still untrained. He doesn’t under­stand the word “No.” He doesn’t under­stand any of the words that come out of my mouth. I’ve tried to keep it sim­ple with “Stop”, “Don’t” and a plethora of other four-​letter words that have no impact.

He’s not evil or mali­cious. In fact, he rou­tinely expresses affec­tion. The dog is a licker. It’s just that he’s also a chewer. Some­times he gets the two con­fused. Last night, I was on the floor and he decided to come bound­ing over and lick my face. Then came a moment that passed in an instant, but I remem­ber it clearly in slow motion. There was a sparkle in his eye, then a slight smile. That’s when he reached for­ward and chomped hard on the base of my nose! I used another four let­ter word that he didn’t understand.

My Golden Retriever is now seven years old, but he was just as bad. Zach, the Destroyer. He liked to chew on my walls. Once, he chewed through the din­ing room wall until he reached the cin­der blocks. Not just some small hole, but one big enough for him to fit through. I’m hop­ing Milo doesn’t learn the same tricks, because I don’t want to replace dry­wall and paint again. On the other hand, Zach is much more likely to sit still for a por­trait. Maybe the trick to pet pho­tog­ra­phy is to get older dogs who just sit there and smile.