Beautiful Beasties: A Creative Guide to Modern Pet Photography

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About Beautiful Beasties: A Creative Guide To Modern Pet

Product Description The book pet photographers have been waiting for: a comprehensive guide to professional modern pet photography Everyone who has ever trained their camera on a domestic animal knows how challenging it can be to get great shots of them. These unpredictable 'beautiful beasties' won't hold poses, smile and say "cheese" like a human will, and their erratic movement can have you spinning dials and pushing buttons on your camera so fast it will make your head spin. Whether you are an advanced amateur with a passion for photographing pets, or a professional pet photographer generating revenue with your services, this guide will show you how to create engaging, high-quality, professional pet photos from start to finish.  With pet owners comprising more than 62 percent of Americans, pet photography has become a popular trend among photographers, with more and more pet owners wanting to have their furry family member's mugs captured for posterity. Zeroes in on pet photography as a professional service, and offers advice on how to price, how to brand your business, how to work with clients, build your portfolio, create a solid workflow and develop your own unique style. Explains how to work with animals from a behavioral standpoint, capture engaging expressions, create variety in photo sessions, pick interesting locations, edit for better images, work with multiple animals, photograph pets in a studio, and much more. As the first serious comprehensive professional guide to pet photography on the market, Beautiful Beasties has what passionate hobbyists and professional photographers need to capture memorable pet photos. Amazon.com Review 5 Pet Photography Tips from Beautiful Beasties 1. Have fun with it! Make it a game. Be upbeat. Bring out the toys, participate in an activity your pet finds fun. For cats this may be a game involving tinfoil balls or a feather toy, for dogs this may be a squeaky toy. For horses, rodents and other pets, this is whatever puts them in the best mood--whatever their 'favorite' thing is. 2. Get on their level Scoot, crouch, bend, scuffle, lay, twist, roll- whatever you need to to do get down and create photographs on the pet's level. Wear dirty clothes. No pet photographer ever worse expensive jeans and sneakers to a photo shoot. Animals experience the world on a different plane than we do, and being able to create photographs captured on their level makes them more emotional, more engaging, and more connected, to the person that views the images. 3. Pay your model You wouldn't expect a human model to work for you without payment right? So why should you expect an animal to work without getting paid? Figure out what's the most appreciate item for payment. A toy, a treat, an old rag, a carrot- whatever it takes to keep them engaged and motivated. 4. Pay attention to backgrounds Nothing can ruin a perfectly good photo better than ugly, cluttered backgrounds. Nobody needs to see that old garden hose, or your dirty sock on the floor, in an otherwise beautiful photo of Rupert the cat. Spend a few minutes before your photo session eyeballing the scene behind the animal. A few quick pickups of distracting 'junk' can mean you never having to say "Oh man, I wish that ____ wasn't in the photo" again, or spending unnecessary time in Photoshop or Lightroom. (Unless of course the offending object is something like a house or someone else's car, in which case--just move the animal). 5. Focus on expressions Forget technical skill. Any pet owner will respond to an expressive, 'aww-inducing,' 'laugh-inspiring' photo over a technically perfect yet emotionally lacking photo any day of the week. Capture a pet in the moment where it is expressing the essence of its personality, showing you it's true colors (whatever those may happen to be!), and the owner of the pet will forgive all manner of exposure, composition and other issues. All they really want is to say "You got him, you really got him!". If y