SHOOT THE DOG™: Oh Romeo, Romeo

This is the first of what will be a continuing series of posts about photographing dogs.  I get lots of questions from people who ask how I captured a particular image, or what kind of lens I use, or if I think Nikon is better than Canon, or did I take photography classes, or whether I just took a picture the of dog and put it in front of a nice background (heavens, no!), and so on.  Mostly, these people all love dogs, enjoy photography, and wish they could take better pictures of their own dogs or somebody else’s.  But like me when I began, they don’t really know where to start.

So I’ll offer the best advice I can give to anybody who wants to learn to take better photos, of dogs or of anything else.  Pick up your camera and go out and shoot.  Shoot a lot.  I’m talking 1,000 shots a week.  That’s 50,000+ photos a year.  That’s a lot of clicks.

Here’s the deal.  There are many skills you will need to master before you can produce images that look like you want them to, and you’ll never do it if you don’t know your camera so well that it’s like part of your body.  When you drive a car, you don’t think about having to brake when you come to a turn, you don’t have to look around for the gear shifter when you want to go into reverse.  These things are second nature to you because you’ve probably spent a good fraction of your life driving.  That’s how well you need to know your camera.

Now, maybe you’re a real beginner and you don’t even know what all the buttons and dials do.  That’s fine.  Learn one thing at a time.  Shoot a bunch of pictures using the new skill you’re practicing, play around with the setting or technique, and pay attention to what your photos look like.  If you shoot a thousand photos playing with the aperture setting, your fingers will learn how to change it without looking, and you’ll learn something about how it affects your photos.

What should you do with all these thousands of photos?  First, learn what you can from them.  Digital cameras save all the settings on the camera with the file, so you can go home and review your photos and the data together.  Learn from the shots you botched.  Learn from the ones you nailed.  Then, when you’ve gone over everything, save out the few that you really like if there are any and throw the rest away.  (That’s “delete” on a computer.)  Don’t be ashamed if it’s 95% of what you shot.  That’s my percentage of duds.  And shooting 50,000 images a year, I’ll have maybe 4 or 5 in the whole year that I think are really first rate.   Perhaps the difference between an amateur and a professional is that the pro throws most of the shots away.  

Since you’re probably a dog lover if you’re on my site, my next suggestion is to practice by taking photos of dogs.  Take your dog to the dog park and while he’s off doing fun doggy stuff, sit down on the ground and shoot.  (Yes, sit on the ground, at least for now.  More about that later.)  Don’t wait until you think you see the perfect picture.  Just point that gun and shoot.  If you wonder why I say this, go back and read the posts on this blog.  Far more often than not, my favorite images were just dumb luck.  Many times I didn’t even know I had a great shot until I got home and looked at the day’s take.

Today’s picture is an example.  It’s not a superb photograph, but there’s a symmetry to it that I really like, and as it happens these two dogs (that’s Romeo in the foreground, Pico in the background) are best dog-park buddies.  I was taking some shots of Romeo, and while I was shooting I didn’t even notice Pico in the distance.  Despite the shallow depth of field that blurs the background, the light catching Pico’s outline keeps him from getting lost against the dark vegetation and reveals just enough of his outline to provide the symmetry that makes the shot.  It was a dumb luck shot.  Not epic, but interesting at least.

So grab the camera and head out to where you can find some dogs at play.  Take 1,000 pictures.  If you don’t have a clue how to use a camera, just put it on program and go for it.  I promise you, among all the overexposed, blurry, crooked photos, there will be at least a few that you’ll really like.  Then come back here and we’ll take the next step!

Incoming search terms:

• canon dogs
• what settings do i shoot for pet photography