Photographing animals can bring an extra challenge with photography, especially studio photography. But I love how pets bring so much character to a portrait. I never know what type of pet-personality I’m going to end up with until it arrives in the studio space. In addition, every pet has a different normal to going places and being in new spaces. Dogs find it odd to be put on paper backdrops, it’s slick and feels weird on their pads and can be quite distracting to them. Cats need a bit of time to acclimate to space and check it out and explore it before they feel like sitting still. These are all things you need to be aware of when accepting jobs with animals involved.
On my second round of portrait headshots with pets for the Southern Oregon Veterinary Surgery Center, I invited my headshot guests to my downtown studio. The first round we did in their staff break room earlier this year. The first time I did these, we used a table for the animals, as the previous photographer had in most of their other shots.
Personally, this was a learning moment.; it made the job much more difficult when it came to trying to pose and settle a medium-sized dog with two chihuahuas all in one. I ended up with a lot of compositing (aka Photoshopping) by the end of it all and to be honest, still wasn’t super happy with the end result (the poor chihuahuas are so scared looking!). I also felt it limited giving the animal freedom to give me a little personality for the shots. So this second round doing some updated headshots with pets, I opted for a full black paper backdrop to the floor and at my space which was a lot more calm than the business location break room.
Overall, I would love to find more opportunities to do portraits with pets. I may have to do some fun offerings in the future for “holidays” such as, National Dog Day!
