SHOOT THE DOG™: Using perspective

The difference between a good photograph and a great one is often the little “tricks” used in the setup and camera work.  I wanted to get a shot of Gavin (GCH CH Lakota’s Hitman Of Cantar) gaiting that would knock your socks off, and since we were near the beautiful beach in Ventura, CA I decided to head to the water to come up with something interesting.

We were shooting in the late afternoon, and the sun was dropping below the horizon, so it would be a sunset shot.  The tide was way out, leaving a large, nearly level beach of wet sand.  My instructions to handler JR Alcantara were to run the dog in a straight line just above the line of the tide.   I positioned myself far enough away up the beach to allow me to shoot with a telephoto.  I did this for two reasons.

- First, it would keep the dog in front of me and more or less perpendicular to the water line for a longer time; that is, the dog’s speed relative to the background would be slower.  This gives me more chances to catch the right part of the stride as the dog trots by in front of me.

- The other reason for a telephoto is that it would compress the background, and I wanted to use this to produce a special effect.  At the beach, this would cause the breaking waves in the background to appear closer to the dog than they really were.  Then, if shot with my camera as low to the ground as possible, the waves in the background would appear huge relative to the size of the dog.  (I was shooting with my Canon EOS 1D Mark III at ISO 200 and 1/200 sec, and my EF 70-200 mm f/2.8L IS USM at f/6.3.)

When everything was ready, I laid down flat on the beach with my camera just above the wet film on the sand.  JR gaited the dog perfectly in front of me, and we got this dramatic shot.  The dog stands out from the waves in the background that look both large and close, like they’re about to overwhelm him.  There’s enough light left from the sunset to provide a bit of backlighting that highlights the fur on his legs and tail and catches the bits of water and wet sand coming off the bottom of his feet.  The wet beach produces a shimmery reflection and mirrors the color of the sky into the foreground, so the dog stands out against the blue water behind him.

To be fair, this isn’t a perfect shot.  The German Shepherd is known for its “flying trot”, with all four feet off the ground in the middle of the stride.  I wanted to catch the dog completely airborne, and I missed it by a few milliseconds.  But everything else about the shot is so dramatic that it was the easy winner among the other shots from the day.

Getting this great photo took some planning and an understanding of both optics and perspective.  Just knowing the body and lens I used wouldn’t be enough information to allow you to go out and create a similar image yourself.  The “tricks” are in how I used the gear and set up the shot.

You can read about how I got this shot, but if you really want to gain the skills to create images that will stand out from the rest, you need to experiment yourself.  Go out and shoot with long and short lenses, from a standing position to flat on the ground.  Study these shots and you will discover that you can produce very different looking images from some simple changes in how you shoot.

Knowing how to create the shot you envision in your mind is what will make you a photographer and not just somebody with a camera!

Incoming search terms:

• german shepherd on beach
• gaiting corgi
• german shepherd photography
• German Shepherd Dog shutter shots
• german shepherd at the beach
• GCH Lakotas Hitman Of Cantar
• hd german shepherd playing at beach sunset
• jr alcantara german shepherds california
• photos of german shepherds on beach
• taking perspective photo shots