How to Photograph Your Pet

Who doesn’t love a fun photograph of their fuzzy, loveable four-legged family members! Folks love them so much that their smartphone photo libraries are inundated with snapshots of yawns, stretches, and more. But what happens when they want something more substantial? That’s where you, the photographer, come in. Whether you’re shooting for a friend or for a paying client, you need to know what makes for a good pet portrait.

Pet photography is a blend of photographic genres, combining the well-manicured world of portraiture, with the spontaneous nature of sports and wildlife. But how do we set everything up in frame? What are the best settings? We’ll answer that and more below. In this guide, we’re going to explore everything you need to know to begin your pet photography journey.

At its core, pet photography is about capturing the personality of your subject. That may be in the eyes, or in a behavior. To be ready for anything, we’ll need the right gear, we’ll need to know how to use it, but more importantly, we’ll need to know proper pet photography techniques. These skills will get us the look we’re after, no matter what gear we’re working with.

Technique gets the creativity flowing, and with that, we need to master our camera settings to allow our artistic vision to be expressed. Our exposure settings are directly responsible for our final image, from how sharp they are to how bright and even how balanced the color temperature is, and the three individual settings responsible for shaping our exposure are aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Together, these settings are known most commonly as the exposure triangle. The balance of these three settings allows you to create the best exposure for the scene at hand, and to do so while expressing your artistic intent.

Aperture: The size of the opening in the rear of the lens. Controls how much light reaches our imaging sensor and the area of apparent focus in our image, known as depth of field.

Shutter Speed: Controls the duration of our exposure, with faster speeds freezing action, and slower speeds blurring motion.

ISO: The camera sensors sensitivity to light. A lower value yields cleaner files, where higher values introduce grain or digital noise to our images.

How these settings can be manipulated to better your pet photography varies subject to subject. Aperture can alter our depth of field, and while a blurry background is essential, so is capturing our subject in perfect sharpness from nose to ear. Read more about the ideal settings for pet photographer here.

You know what really ups the quality of our pet photos? Lighting. Just as with any form of portrait, lighting unlocks possibilities that can be impossible without it. But what lighting system should we use? Is a strobe the right option, or should we use constant LED lights? Each system has its merits, but the practicality of each depends on the scene and the pet at hand.

Flash: Flash provides a powerful beam of light at an extremely fast speed. This makes it beneficial in situations where photographers need to capture fast action like an indoor sporting event or in this case, animals.

Continuous Light: Continuous lights, like LEDs, constantly emit light as their name suggests. This is not only great for beginners, since it eliminates the need for guesswork and allows the user to see the scene as it is captured, but brings greater versatility to our photo shoot.

If you’re a pet owner, you’re already halfway there. Practice often, experiment with different lighting setups, and go from there. If not, reach out to friends and family who do have pets and make a fun day out of it. With the technical and creative foundation, we’re ready to start experimenting with our art. Learn how to get the shot from the experts and hone these newly learned skills.

Pet photography is undeniably enjoyable and immensely rewarding. It’s a blend of many genres, requiring not only technical skills, but creative ones in order to master our craft. To learn more about photography and the tips and techniques required to become a pro, consider checking out our other articles and videos on the B&H Explora site.