My aim for this entry is to share my experience photographing dogs for my project and what I have learned throughout the course of my final year at university specifically relating to the practice of photographing dogs. And since I am by no means an expert myself, this will be more of a suggestive guide with a lot of anecdotal experience rather than a comprehensive and factual guide. Basically, the aim here is to share my learnings and to hopefully pass on some of that knowledge to any would be dog photographers.

Research.

In the beginning of my dog photography journey, I knew little about how to capture our four-legged friends in the most captivating way possible. So, I did some research. I looked at various photobooks such as Dogdogs by Elliot Erwitt and Well Heeled by Dougie Wallace which gave me a greater understanding on how photographers go about taking pictures of dogs. The emphasis always seemed to be on capturing the essence of each dog’s individual character. The eyes of the dogs were often a pivotal focal point in portraiture style images and movement was often accentuated in shots with more action in them. What I had found is that photographing dogs was much like photographing people. This therefore informed my own practice when shooting for the first time. And so, the time came for my first photoshoot.

The Unpredictability of Photographing Dogs.

During the first shoot my aim was to take my research and put it into practice. The first shots, for which I will provide an example below, were off the mark in terms of where I wanted to be but were necessary in terms of finding the eventual improvements I needed. Aside from the technical improvements needed, what I learned from this shoot was that dogs will do… well whatever they want really. You may go into a shoot with certain ideas but at the end of the day an untrained dog is unpredictable and may well refuse outright to do what you ask. In that case, any preconceptions about how the shoot is going to pan out need to be taken with a pinch of salt as you may end up with a set of completely different images than imagined. For example, I had brought a lighting setup to the shoot and had the idea to move it from spot to spot as I shot. I soon realised that the dogs couldn’t be kept in those specific places without copious amounts of treats, so I removed one of the lights from its stand and used it as a handheld flash while following the dogs. With all of that said, the images I did manage ended up being much better in a conceptual sense than I had hoped for. My project is all about capturing individuality within dogs so them doing whatever they wanted suited me well. It may not have been what I expected but the end results were something even better.

Using What I Had at My Disposal.

What I mean by this is surveying what exactly it is I have in front of me. How many dogs? What environment am I in? How do these aspects affect what I am going to shoot? For example, some of my shoots featured three dogs within a home environment. Knowing this, I set out to capture what it is the three dogs do within their home. I shot individual images of all three dogs but also managed to capture moments where two of them or even at times all three dogs were featured. I allowed the dogs to run free, shooting as they went about their day/evening which resulted in a set of images that felt natural and raw rather than staged and forced.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I shot images where I was out and about on the street and only featuring one dog. In this case I sometimes only had seconds to react. This is where my camera settings and being able to switch settings quickly became vital. This was a stark contrast to shooting within a home environment where I had time to get my lighting and settings ready to go and was able to shoot comfortably at my own pace. What I did find however was that the core principles remained the same, I allowed the dogs to do whatever they wished as that is what I wanted to capture. Essentially, the core differences were the amount of time I had to capture an image and having to use my ability to operate a camera in those quick snapshot moments.

What I Focused on (Portraiture). 

Many of my images for the project were portraits of the dogs. As I mentioned in previously, capturing a portrait of a dog is not unlike doing the same for a human. The lighting is just as important but sometimes even more so as darker coloured dogs can be difficult to expose correctly. So, I made sure my lighting setup was good enough to make sure I was able to capture details in the fur which are extremely important to the texture of the image. Another way portraits of dogs are similar to those of people is where the focus is applied. The eyes and nose are a big focal point in portraits and with dogs this is no exception. Alot of the dog’s personality and expression comes from their eyes so I made sure to make them pop as much as possible, through lighting and subsequent editing. The nose becomes even more important with dogs too. As we know, a dog’s nose is a very important tool for sniffing out food and other scents. Their nose also comes as a cold, wet surprise when you least expect it too. So, for those reasons it was important to make sure the nose was in focus and the texture of the nose was captured well. 

Final Word.

To finish up this post I want to talk about how fun it was to photograph for this project. Of course, the amount of enjoyment depends on how much you like dogs but in my case, it meant that I loved every second of it. Not only did I photograph the dogs, I also bonded with them throughout which I believe played a big part in how well the images came out. Bonding with the dogs made them more comfortable with having a camera around them (though dogs seem to exhibit more curiosity than apprehension in my experience) and meant that I could get in closer to them, often on their level and really capture some intimate moments. As I said, I love dogs so being able to interact with them whilst combining that with my love for photography for my final year university work has been a dream come true that I didn’t know I had. What began as an interesting idea became something I have begun to consider a possible career path in the future.