What are the pet photography skills?

With the advent of the era of national photography, more and more families have professional SLR cameras. As a shovel officer with a lovely pet at home, we need to take beautiful photos of other people's projects for the "little master" at home and record every happy moment of the lovely pet. Here are the pet photography skills I brought to you. Welcome to reading.

1, family pet photography concept

What we mean by family pet photography is different from the guest films of pet photography studio. The guest film has a certain routine, similar to the wedding photography of the assembly line, while the family pet photography only takes pictures of its own pets, which has a higher degree of freedom, and can often record the changes of pets and improve its photography level.

2, shooting pet equipment recommendation

For pet photography, I recommend a camera with better focusing performance. I have been photographing pets with Canon 5D3 for several years. This Quan Huafu SLR camera is excellent in focusing and image quality. Of course, the latest Canon 5D4 further enhances the focusing performance, which is also worth recommending.

As for the lens, my favorite shot of pets is Canon's 50mm F 1.4. Sometimes, in order to pursue some interesting effects, I also use 24-70 F2.8 or ultra-wide-angle zoom lens 17-40 F4. Of course, when shooting outdoors, I have to use a 70-200 F4 lens. These three shots cover almost all the focal segments that can be used in daily shooting.

3. Key factors in preparation.

One of the preparations that must be made before daily shooting is to help pets take care of their hair. As far as the Teddy dogs I shoot are concerned, it is necessary to take care of their hair before each shooting. If possible, it would be better to have a facial, but there is no need to do it specially for shooting. Generally, I will choose them to shoot one or two days after beauty treatment, so the shooting effect will be better. After all, everyone doesn't want their pets to look dirty in the camera. Just like we take pictures of people, models should arrange their hair and make up before we take pictures. The reason is the same.

4, the choice of environment and light

When it comes to the shooting environment, I don't deliberately choose any special scenes. I usually shoot on the floor at home or on the sofa in bed, because shooting at home will make them more relaxed. After all, this is their usual living environment. According to their habits, you should also know where they like to appear. Don't force them to shoot in an unfamiliar environment, so they need to adapt to the new environment and sometimes they won't even listen to you.

The choice of light is very important. I basically don't use flash to shoot, so natural light is the best choice, so try not to shoot at night, but shoot during the day when the sun enters the room, and try to find some places with windows when choosing scenes, so that natural light is more abundant. Even if the aperture is large enough in some corners where there is no light, the sensitivity can be high, and the photos taken under natural light are not good. I shoot this fresh style of pet works.

Even when shooting at night, Canon EOS 5D3 Quan Huafu SLR camera with 50mm F 1.4 fixed-focus lens can make the photos look bright.

5, composition tips

Actually, taking pictures of pets is not the same as taking pictures of people. We use many composition methods when taking pictures of people, but the middle composition method is my favorite, because we still need to take care of the whole environment and background in some cases when taking pictures of people, but when taking pictures of pets, the focus of the photos is this pet. As long as the environmental background is not particularly ugly and chaotic, no one will care too much about those, and everyone will be attracted by the pet in the middle of the picture when they see the photo.

Another advantage of this composition is that we don't need to change the focus often. The Canon 5D3 camera I use is 6 1 in focus. Of course, I can try to choose a more suitable focus to shoot, but sometimes when shooting this moving little guy, it has moved before you choose the focus, and we need to choose a new focus, so we might as well shoot with only one focus in the middle area.

In addition, some home users may not use Canon 5D3 or 5D4. For example, we use a 6D or APS-C format camera, and we don't have to worry that the lack of focus will affect our shooting, because we use a medium focus, and everyone can shoot with any EOS SLR camera. However, how to catch running pets requires high performance of continuous focus tracking and continuous shooting speed.

6. The focus is on the soul of the photo.

Now that we're talking about focusing, let me tell you a little trick that you must know when shooting pets. When shooting a pet, you must aim the camera at the pet's eyes as much as possible. It is said that the eyes are the windows of the soul. If the focus of a photo is not on the eyes, the whole photo will look dim. On the contrary, if the dog's eyes in our photo are very bright and clear, it will make the finishing touch and make the whole photo look soulful.

Next, let's take a look at some operational skills in actual shooting:

First, the difference between a guide dog and a guide model

Shooting a pet needs guidance as much as shooting a portrait, but the guidance of a dog and a character model is very different, because we need to talk when communicating with people, and the model can understand what we want to shoot, but the dog can't. What are they interested in? There are only two things, that is, toys and food, so it is very important to attract their attention with what they like in the process of photographing dogs. We can use toys to "lure" pets and get them close to filming.

Second, capture the most vivid moment of the dog.

Just as photographers like models to give us a touching smile, dogs also have their most touching moments, that is, when they stick out their tongues, there is a moment when they tilt their heads. What I mean here is that showing your tongue is not necessarily the kind of yawning with a long mouth. In fact, dogs lick their mouths a lot, so it would be interesting to capture this moment. In addition, if you have dog friends at home, you should make a noise. Because in a casual moment, our dog will suddenly tilt his head and show a particularly naughty and lovely state. Grasping these two moments can make our photos more vivid.

With the high-speed continuous shooting function of 6 frames per second of EOS 5D3 Quan Huafu SLR camera, we don't miss every vivid moment.

Third, shooting skills in sports

Although we are talking about family pet photography, we can't take it all at home. We should take dogs out to play from time to time and capture some moments of their movement. This kind of sports shooting requires us to know something about the camera settings, because we can't use the ordinary focus mode anymore. In this case, we need to use the artificial intelligence servo autofocus of EOS camera, which can keep the focus of the camera chasing pets in focus at any time, so that the capture in motion can also be accurately focused.

When shooting moving pets, there are also certain requirements for shutter speed. Usually when shooting a running dog, the shutter speed should be at least11000 s, so as to ensure that the subject of the photo is clear. If the shutter speed is not enough, the pet is blurred and not clear enough. If the outdoor lighting conditions are not good and the shutter speed can't reach11000 s, the sensitivity can be improved appropriately.

Fourth, how to shoot a newborn dog?

This subject belongs to a rare shooting opportunity. If your girl dog is pregnant, you will have a chance to take a group of photos like this. We all know that all animals are particularly cute when they are young, and the smaller they are, the cuter they are, and cats and dogs are no exception. They were also better at shooting when they were young. Like human babies, they like sleeping very much, so they can be controlled by us, making shooting easier and more controllable.