Petraits?
July 5, 2009
I got a request to do some pet photography (through the website’s snazzy new contact form), so I thought I’d do a little trial run on my favorite test subjects. Doing pet portraits is actually pretty similar to kids – you’re pretty much doing what they want, regardless of what you had planned. Also, snacks make a great bribe.
I started out with Pete, since he’s my easy one. Almost all of our walls are paneling, so I broke out some white poster board for a background. I set them up in front of our front door (inside the house), to get some light.
We spent a ton of time training Pete, so I pretty much just asked him to sit (once!) and he stayed there for a good 15 shots. I didn’t even have to bribe him with bacon treats, although he got them anyway.
Well-trained, and photogenic!
Then, onto Molly. She was a bit tougher. For one thing, she’s still a little bit afraid of the big camera (you’d think by now, everyone in the house would be QUITE used to it). Also, any time you’re trying intently to get Molly to do something, it freaks her out. So when she wandered away from the backdrop, and I tried to get her to come back to it, she just lay out on the floor looking confused. She seems to get upset when she can’t figure out what you want from her. So rather than traumatize poor Molly, I just took some shots where she decided to lay down.
She did eventually wander back over to the posterboard set-up, and I got exactly one shot before she took off again.
