COMPOSE A PERFECT PET IMAGE
Use different angles and approaches to make your pet shots stand out
There are various image-creating strategies that photographers can use to visually bring feline friends and canine companions into sharper focus. One of the bestknown and most efficient methods is to incorporate a shallow depth of field that isolates the subject from its surroundings. This ensures that the focus is almost entirely centred on the pet, and that any distracting elements in the background are reduced to indistinguishable shapes by the blur.
To achieve this effect, it’s important to change your camera settings to a wide aperture, although bear in mind that extreme aperture values also reduce critical sharpness. To implement this process when photographing animals, the aperture and shutter speed must always be controlled individually at any time to achieve sharp results. Pets have a tendency to change position, and change their mood or facial expressions quickly, so you want to be able to maintain the focus as much as possible.
Conversely, a fast shutter speed means that only a little light can reach the camera’s sensor. To make the shoot easier on yourself, you can use the automatic ISO to work flexibly.
Modern DSLR and mirrorless cameras perform well even at high ISO values and when shooting in raw format, so the basic brightness of the image can be corrected in post-processing without impacting image quality.
Besides the aperture, there are two other possible parameters that you can use to control the depth of field. The longer the focal length you’re working with, the shallower the depth of field – the focus distance will have a big influence on this effect. Get as close as possible to your subject to achieve the shallowest depth of field and show off your pet in its best possible light.