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Sisters and Their Dog–So Much Love.
What great smiling faces!
Capturing children with their beloved dog is always a pleasure and an opportunity for some fun portraits that mom, dad and the relative will love and enjoy.
I chose to do a tight close-up on the 3 of them as a strong image with their dog as the centerpiece of the portrait and the girls on each side of their dog to hold on tight and smile.
I like a simple, non distracting background that does not detract from the subjects. These type of portraits tend to be high energy efforts and the girls needed lots of encouragement and the result was they did a great job both smiling and controlling their dog!
A Family Portrait (When the Dogs ARE the Family)
When I photograph a family group portrait and the dogs are the family members i always work to show the group together in a pleasing composition. Of course, I want the humans to be relaxed and smiling and also in control of their dog(s) but not in a manner that shows resistance, restraint or a sense of great effort.
In addition, I want the dogs to be attentive, looking at the camera and smiling if at all possible. In a portrait like this one, their is a lot of coaching involving the way the couple is controlling their dogs, how they should be sitting and their posture, if they need to move their dogs closer or farther apart and so on.
These type of portrait sessions are exciting, challenging and really rewarding especially when the during the portrait session all images come together just right and the winning poses are captured.
Puppy Love–The Making of a Puppy Group Portrait
As you can imagine there are a number of things that go on during a portrait session. But even before it starts it is important to have a set. A piece of furniture or another item that will keep the pups close together and also that it will look good in the portrait.
Having enough helpers, who I call ‘wranglers’ is critical. To create this portrait their were two wranglers, one one each side kneeling just out of the view of the camera.Their job was to keep the pups on the bench and turn them to the camera if needed. I had my whole selection of squeaky toys and noisemakers which I used along with vocal sounds that I would make to get and keep the pups attention.
The dark bench also servers as a nice contrast against the white fur of the pups. Of course, working fast is critical and capturing lots of poses before the pups run out of energy and the session is done.
Puppy Love–The Making of a Puppies Portrait
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