Dog Photography Tips for Garage Lighting
By KRae Merk | March 24, 2010
I’m going to start posting videos!! Since I can’t sit here and post a thousand pictures to my blog, I will put them in a video for you to enjoy! So stay tuned! But in the mean time, a few dog photography tips from a photo shoot with Candy in a RV garage.
My brother has a 78 Bronco in the process of restoration, and it provides wonderful and colorful backgrounds for a photo shoot. Now, since Candy loves riding in the passenger seat of any vehicle, it was pretty easy to get her to pose for me, but the hard part was getting the lighting where I wanted it because the lighting in the garage where the Bronco is was pretty poor.
This situation demanded an off camera flash. So I took my Nikon SB-900 and set to remote mode. I wanted a slight yellow tint to the picture so I put a yellow filter on my flash head to give the scene a yellow tint like the sun rising. I put the flash on the hood and angled it through the windshield at Candy’s head. (Note on where I got my flash filters, you know the gels you can get for studio lights? Well, they make a sample ring that you can get and they are the perfect size for flash heads. I think you can get them at any studio lighting store)
Another dog photography tip; I used food to get her to give me the cute expression with ears pricked.
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Dog Photography Tips for Inside
By KRae Merk | March 19, 2010
Now, to start with, not every indoor situation is going to be perfect for lighting. (the same for outdoors too) So for indoors I usually use a flash unit, a Nikon SB-900 with my Nikon D300 and Nikon 18-200 VR lens. The photos below were taken with the set up described above, when I use a flash, its usually set in manual mode with a white balance preset set by the camera, or shutter priority. Now, I all most always have my flash set for rear flash settings.
In this photo, the flash head was pointed upward sligtly upward and left.
The flash head on this photo was pointed behind and sligtly above my head.
The flash head in this photo was directed behind me and sligtly to the left, and she had a lamp behind her too, to get the warm glow behind her.
When I use the flash, I usually turn the flash head toward a nearby wall, or behind me, or use the flash sync method and hold it away from me or put it on its little stand and tilt the head in the desired direction. Now, for the dog. To get a desired expression, I usually don’t use food. Why? About 95% of the dogs I’ve photographed are very food motivated, and if the dog isn’t trained to sit still, and you show it food, the dog ends up in your lap not in the desired place. I typically just use odd hand signals, toys, chirps and whistles, have someone stand nearby and get the dogs attention, things like that. But my style of dog photography is dogs being dogs, so I don’t pose them that often. Now, the photo below, to get Candy to look at me, I just chirped and she looked and click, got the shot.
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Some More Dog Photography Tips
By KRae Merk | March 15, 2010
Some of the biggest “wower” photos I get are ones that consist of dogs in a full out run and the photo freezes the motion with a blurred background and the dog in focus.
A trick I’ve learned is when you’re after those awesome blurred background photos, you need a high powered zoom lens. My favorite camera & lens for this job are the Nikon D300; Very fast (6 pictures a second), awesome white balance, reliable, very ergonomic, outstanding picture quality, & Nikon 70-300 zoom lens; its inexpensive, very sharp focus, fast, feels good in the hands, (looks good too).
The camera settings I use most of the time for outside are Programmed Auto with the white balance set for the current weather outside. Since most of my dog photography takes place outside and outside the lighting changes by the millisecond so using Shutter, Aperture, or Manual mode, my experiences have been not so good with these settings, now, I do use those settings in other situations, but not usually outside. I will cover the situations I use the other settings in future posts.
Getting back to the dog photography tips, when I’m taking photos with the idea of getting the wow shot I don’t take my finger off the shutter button with the knowledge that I can always delete the ones that aren’t worth saving later on the computer. Also, another tip is putting your camera on a tripod, but I hardly ever use a tripod for outside action dog photography, so I don’t get as clear photos sometimes as I could. Also, move the camera with the same speed and motion of the subject in motion, that’s how you get the blurred background. But the main thing is don’t let off the shutter, I’ve take hundreds of photos and only kept a few in the past, so, you can never take enough photos.
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Some of my Dog Photography Tips That I Use
By KRae Merk | March 11, 2010
Well, I guess one of my biggest dog photography tips is the dog I photograph most of the time is my dog Candy whom I raised from a 8 week old pup. But that isn’t always the case with most photography subjects. Now, I like to photograph dogs in their natural surroundings, (i.e, outside in the backyard, in their house, est.) dogs normally give me their best when I’m in the surroundings they are used to. I do dog photography in studios and I’ve done a few props with the dogs here and there, but my favorite way is in their natural element.
In their natural state you get photos like this;
Now, like I said, I have done a few studio shots, but my favorite type of “studio” shots are ones that have a natural background. (i.e, outdoor backgrounds like the ones below)
That’s the dog photography tip for today, and yes I know, I haven’t posted in like forever, but I’m working on doing a post week, so check back soon!
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The 4-Legged Blues Brothers
By KRae Merk | October 3, 2009
A couple of friends of mine are blues guitarist, and I decided to have a little fun with it. 
Oh, in case your wonderin’… yes one of the dogs did NOT like to wear sunglasses, in this case it was Wolfe. (Wolfe is the one laying down) So, I had to be a Marine and improvise. I found some hay baleing twine and tied them on his head, and yes, he was not happy about that… not one bit… tough… I got a great picture, and that’s all that counts. 
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Texas…
By KRae Merk | September 22, 2009
I love these photos, for a born and bred Texan, they mean a lot.
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Fixing “Fronkenstien”
By KRae Merk | September 14, 2009
Over Labor Day weekend, my brother Kody was helping some of his buddies in putting “Fronkenstien” back together.
Now, “Fronkenstien” is a older Toyota pickup that has been refitted with super swamper mud tires, and has a reputation of rescuing everyone from the Deep Depths of the Infamous Red Mud.
Fronkenstien had his engin taken out and was rebuilt a few months ago, and I took these pictures while Kody, Lance, and Tom were trying to rewire the engin back up. (I won’t go into details on how they put the pieces and the parts and all the nuts and bolts back in, nor the conversation that followed)
See me in the mirror?
This is Fronkenstien’s “moon roof”
Fronkenstien has many uses; a hat rack.
This Praymantis was “praying” over Fronkenstien, and we all decided to leave him alone, only occasional asking him to pray to God to make the !#$%& thing run!
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Cool Dude
By KRae Merk | September 8, 2009
The other morning, I noticed Wolfe laying down with his paws crossed, and he was so relaxed and cool that I just fell in love with the pictures I got of him.
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Weekend Bones
By KRae Merk | August 29, 2009
This weekend I gave all the dogs a bone, because we had a “cool front” come through Dallas. (cool front to a Texan means temperatures in the upper 80ties… burrr!)
I love this shot.
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Harbor Portrait
By KRae Merk | August 26, 2009
I got to looking at my favorite pic I got at the harbor this last weekend, and I started playing with it in Lightroom 2. And after I got to looking at the original and the edited one, and I was blown away by the difference;
Before
After
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