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5 Tips For Photographing Pets

When it comes to photographing pets, we all know how trick it can be. I put together these 5 tips to help you begin a journey into animal photography. Please note that I consider animal photography like baby photography without an assistant to grab the baby’s attention. While enjoy photographing animals, they are not my favorite thing to photograph.

  • Natural: Don’t try to pose your pet (unless your William Wegman). The best pet photographs can be the candids. The best pet photographs can be the ones in the studio where the animal is looking the other way (because it is an animal and they can be quite unpredictable)
  • Follow: Have you noticed your pet follow other animals around? Chase them even? Guess what, now it’s your turn. Follow your pet around so capture the perfect moment.
  • Framing: Get in close, most likely using a zoom lens, because some of the best animal photographs are the tightly cropped ones.
  • Bring in the human: Add some more life to the photo by adding your child, pet owner or spouse. Doing so adds more emotion and character to an already fun photograph.
  • Try again later: If the pet is no cooperation, put the camera away and try again later. You can’t push an animal to photograph when and how you want. (unless of course you are William Wegmen)

Have your own tip for a photographing pets? Comment below to share.

Thanks for reading and happy shooting,

Scott

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Comments

385 responses to “5 Tips For Photographing Pets”

  1. A.Barlow Avatar
    A.Barlow

    Nice post and spot on. I think the natural one is best. Nine times out of ten it’s the easiest to get what you want too!

  2. Great tips Scott – I just got a new dog so I’ve been shooting a lot, I’m finding that my 70-200 is really great, I just get low, spend some time and fire away. Once my dog decided to stop licking the lens and go about her business, I got some great shots :)

    1. And your dog shots rare fun!

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