Hey folks! This might feel like deja vu for some of you, as I photographed my dog a few months back here. But who gets sick of seeing dogs? A monster, that’s who.
It’s winter, so my backdrop wasn’t quite as vibrant as last time I shot in our back yard, but we still have green ivy back there. Hungry is a mostly terrible model, because if I try and get down to his level he climbs into my lap. Then when I stand up, he puts his ears back and looks guilty, so that’s mostly what he looks like in these shots. I kind of love shooting him from above, though. The perspective makes him look so tiny.
I use the lowest aperture (f/3.5 on my micro 4/3 Olympus, which isn’t really low, see video below)Â on aperture priority, so the camera chooses the shutter speed and ISO for me.
Pretty sure that has to do with crop factor, which you can learn about here:
So here’s what I wound up with:
Look at that seal pup
f/3.5, 1/160th, ISO 200
Â
I got his eye in focus!
f/3.5, 1/200th, ISO 200
Â
This shot isn’t technically as good, but I love the mood with the backlighting and urban backdrop.
f/3.5, 1/1000th (why?!) ISO 200
Â
I also attempted to photograph my cat, Frank. He is old and barely opens his eyes. He was in the windowsill while it was snowing, so I wanted to capture all that, but was not successful. It was too bright out to capture the snow while also exposing properly for him. When he was sitting still he didn’t give me much of an expression, and when he was moving he was frantically trying to get me to pet him, and was just pacing back and forth (don’t worry, I gave him many pats). I even shot manual to try to get the exposure and shutter speed I wanted, but just couldn’t nail it.
Â
Refusing to make eye contact
f/3.5, 1/60th, ISO 200
Â
Giving himself head rubs.
f/3.5, 1/60th, ISO 200
Â
I honestly don’t have much to teach you here, except that animals are uncooperative models. What did you shoot this week? What could I do to make my pets better models? Let me know in the comments, and I look forward to seeing your fur-children this week!
Make funny noises and give them lots of treats! This always works for dogs. Cats I don’t know 🙂
Haha, yeah, he mostly just jumps on me if I do that.
I love your talking through your shots.. so, light is annoying… it often doesn’t want to do what we want it to do automatically so we have to explain to it what we want.. In franks case $1 would’ve solved it.. go get a “whiteboard” from dollar tree ( I think its $3 at wallyworld ) and hold it camera right angle it so the light is BOUNCING off the board onto frank ( from the window ) you’ll be amazed how much light it will add.. if you want a bit stronger then line it with aluminum foil ( different sides give different reaction ).
as for hungry the main thing is you were shooting into the sun w/o a lens hood.. ( time to visit starbucks! http://www.diyphotography.net/a-coffee-sleeve-lens-hood/ ) This is a prime example of when you need a ND filter &/or “expose for the subject” you camera picked up on the REFLECTED light from the sun instead of the INCIDENCE light from hungry. Another option would have been to put a “diffuser” above hungry. A Simple white bedsheet or even better “leme” would’ve worked. OR.. again using the whiteboard you could’ve “flagged” the sun from above him. Lastly this would’ve been perfect time for HDR. See chapter 3 in SDP 😛
I noticed you used f/3.5 alot and remember when doing that your DOF is shallow, thats why hungry’s legs are blurry. try to aim for f/8 iso: 100 for the most part, but I think for hungry 5.6 would’ve been fine.
Yea, I tend to shoot with the lowest f/stop because it’s really only middling for a micro 4/3 and I want as much blur as I can get in the background, I could use to raise it up a bit though.
I really should try working with a reflector, but Hungry never sits still long enough for me to add another piece of equipment into the mix! I’ll have to try it on a person.
Hi Siobhán.
Bear’s advise is good – it helps me anyway.
Sometimes, a second person is useful to distract/excite/generally wrangle the animal in question.
I like the shots of Hungry:- lots of personality in all of ’em. No.3 is very good.
The photos of Frank show another side to his character – he’s not just the cat that takes a dump on the live show.
( but for me, he’ll always have a place in my heart, just for that…)
😉