Shooting Dogs!

I went to a dog exhibition today. Shooting dogs is challenging because they are so common. Everyone knows what a dog looks like. Everyone knows at least a bit about dog behavior. Google lists 1,420,000,000 results if you search for "dog". 500px.com has 71592 dog photos, many of them depressingly good.

So, what do you do to make it interesting?

First, two very basic things:

1. Get down to the dogs eye level, or lower.
2. Get close.

You'll notice all shots in this article follows these two rules.

What's rule number 3?

Look for an interesting dog!

I found one with sectoral heterochromia, different parts of one iris have different colors. As you can see, I really lucked out, because the dog's left iris is white.

 

You may catch a dog doing interesting things. When something interesting happens, it often happens very fast, so I set my camera to shoot high speed, and hoped for the best.

When I shoot things that move, I usually shoot in bursts of 3 shots. Easer to catch an interesting moment.

Playing with foreground and background elements is also a possibility. In this shot, the dog owner, out of focus in the background, suggests that the dog is thinking about her.

Actually, this is a bit of a cheat, because the woman in the background isn't the owner. The owner stood in front of the dog throwing dog biscuits. The dog is thinking about catching the next biscuit.

And, I am thinking of the next shoot. See you.