Other People's Dogs

I have definitely thought that taking pictures of other people: families, pets, etc, would be fun. I am always taking pictures of my own family, and think that catching the spirit of people and those they love is, well... nice.

This weekend, my husband and I had the pleasure of dog-sitting for a friend of ours. Sam is a sweet 5 year old male Yorkie and Dimi just loves him. I thought this would be a great opportunity to practice taking pictures of another person's dog.

When I take pictures of Dimi, she listens, she stops to look at the camera, she ignores me... she is pretty much as close to a perfect dog subject that I will get. I have discovered that other people's dogs, even Sam who knows me and has lived with me the past 3 days, are a little more challenging to capture. When shooting Sam, he moved around a lot, which created blurry pictures, he wasn't interested in having his picture taken and because we were in my home and not a place that is familiar to him, he didn't interact much with toys and things around him. This just proves the importance of taking pictures where people / dogs feel comfortable. I also took some pictures indoors at night with bad lighting, so the flash was used and so I see the difference in quality between good natural lighting and that of a small camera flash.

Another struggle was taking pictures of the two dogs together. Trying to get their attention to look at me; taking pictures in places where the background is less than ideal, because I'm just so thankful the two of them are in the same shot; getting them both to sit still. The best pictures of the two of them were taken when they were playing and interacting with one another. Getting them to sit pretty for the camera, just didn't work. I did manage to get one picture of the two of them sitting pretty. This was completely by fluke. They were play fighting on the couch and the phone rang, which much to my dismay ended the photo shoot, but when I answered the phone, they both took a spot on the couch one up and one below and watched me while I was on the phone, so I snapped a couple photos and got a nice picture (which of course, would have been nicer had there not been a blanket on the couch and if everything looked a little neater, but that is another lesson in itself).

Here are some of the pictures I took of Dimi and Sam. Please note, there is nothing fancy going on with any of these pictures. I just wanted to share my experience and be forced to really think about what worked and what didn't and how I might be able to get better at taking pictures of other people's dog. If you have any advice / comments, please share.

:) Roon-bop