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Shooting Tips

Let's talk about lighting a little bit. I mentioned this a little bit when I was shooting. The image on the left is kind of more of proper lighting when you're doing, like, 3 to 1 ratio and all that. But like I said, my pet photography just sells better. I don't want to use the word flat light, but I always meet her for my main light. And I always make sure my fill light is just a little bit less. But it is generally more of a flat lighting than it is a big ratio. So that's just what sells. If I use, show the image on the left to clients, everybody is like, Can you kind of Brighton that side of their face a little bit? And just over the years I got tired of hearing it. I'm just gonna add more light. That's what people are happy with. People are having such a hard time taking portrait of their animals themselves at home with their IPhone or if the animals were dark. You know, they're just this black blob or use a flash and they have these demonize, So people are having a hard time takin...

g portrait anyway, so they want to see their portrait. They want to see their animals. They don't need so much of a contrast. So that's what sells better for me. So collars and tags I'm showing these images because I don't like them. The image on the left It's like such a beautiful portrait, the way they're pose their expressions there on this beautiful gold couch. And there's these, like fringy red and pink collars. So to me it's just distracting. I just prefer no collars and no collars in the port, especially no harnesses, because then you have a big thing on their chests, and then you have the clients or, like you can just photoshopped that out right, like their whole chest. But I really prefer no collars on them. If you're outdoors and you need to do it for safety reasons, that's one thing. But just try and coach clients toe, maybe bring something prettier. Thes clients specifically bought these collars for the portrait's, so that's what they wanted. That's what they were happy with. So that's OK, But to me, all I see are the red and pink colors. So the picture on the right, same thing with the tags with their names, especially. You don't want to see the owner's phone number or, you know, people have, like there Rabies tag or their vaccination tag. And really, no one's gonna look at their portrait in 10 years and be like, I'm so glad that I captured that my dog was vaccinated in that portrait like no one's gonna say that said like Let's just not have tags. If you insist on having a caller, something you can do is either take the tags off or flip the collar around. So always put the tags on the back of their neck because you're never going to see that side of their head and then just have the pretty part of the caller in the front tricks to getting animals to sit in Les. So, like I said, when I'm shooting in the studio, I really like animals to be sitting here lying cause they look more settled when I'm outdoors. I'm totally OK with them running around with them standing, but in the studio they do look more settled, something that you can do if you guys have ever done this is kind of turn your hand into a claw and use your nails. If you do that on the back of ah, cat or dog's bottom, try it on yourself, actually. So do this to your palm or do this to your forearm like this. So do that as opposed to this. So doing this. The dog just kind of like whatever you do this, it kind of just guides their bottom down so it doesn't hurt them. But it just kind of goes. It's kind of like a bite in the while that kind like a pack leader making a bite. But it's just kind of saying, Hey, like just giving him a little attention doesn't hurt them. So I do that a lot. Another thing you can do. Animals don't like toe lay on hard surfaces. Just generally, The only times that my dogs lay on hard surfaces is if we just came back from a long walk and they're exhausted and they're trying to cool down on the tile. But besides that, you will never find them on the tile that always be laying in a bed or on carpet. So when you're in the studios, um, style session, you can either use a pillow like this where you can throw a blanket down. So I have a couple pillows that are kind of magic pillows. If I can't get Petzel A was just there a pillow under them and they just kind of settle in and go. Oh, cool. So try those things. Those tricks if you're not getting on the sitter, lay, especially cats cropping. Okay, so I'm people. There's the general rules. When you crop portrait's of people, you don't want to cut people off of the joints. Right? So you don't want to cut someone off here or here or right here, right when you're photographing animals, It's kind of the same concept, their arms split from their chests. If you're shooting um below that split area, it needs to be a full length shot. So if you want to do a head shot, shoot it above the split area or crop it above the split area like you see on the left hand side, the right hand side. It's kind of how you're cutting people off of the joints. You just kind of randomly cut off in the middle there. This is a sample of and he's so cute with his bow tie on and this is not my dog, but keep Weimaraner a full length shot. So on the left, full length on the right again, we're just kind of amputating his legs off. So in a shot like that, it's OK if you shoot it that way, but don't present it that way. Shoot it. So crop it above his arms. So make that a head shot. The exception to the rule, This is the same dog with his owner in this type of situation. I'm totally OK with cutting his legs off here because the owners in it, she's kind of framing the portrait with her arms. If that dog was by himself, I don't want to cut off their cause. All the attention is gonna be on that arm. But there's so many other things going on in the portrait that it's okay in that situation to corrupt there. Okay, posing pets evenly. This is a big one. If you look at the puppy on the left, he's obviously not posed evenly with the adult dog, and the adult dogs kind of peeking around and looking at him. Ah, lot of times I get really picky in sessions I do. Sometimes I'll shoot it. This is really extreme. But like you saw with the shepherds, I weren't. I wasn't perfectly happy with how they were opposed, but I was like, I don't know their personality it maybe they'll be fine, but I don't want to mess with her legs and her kind of flip out, and then you kind of ruin the session. So maybe in the situation shoot one. But you don't wanna waste too many perkier shots because it's not a sellable image. The clients are never going to be happy with this because they're gonna be looking around. They're just not even and when they're doing, the portrait's a lot of owners the way that you saw owners standing next to their dogs. That's what I have people doing in sessions. I don't want them behind me, always want the next to their dogs, and some people are like, OK, they're staying. Hurry, do it, shoot and again, don't give into that craziness. It's okay, we're going to get the shot. If you could just move her up an inch, just push him back just a little bit and again you just want to make sure that you're shooting sellable images and you want to make sure you're not wasting perky your expressions on an image. It's not gonna sell. Okay, focus on the eyes. So when I'm shooting, I always use a single focus point. So there's some, like point and shoot cameras where there's like you press the shutter halfway down, and there's like nine or like spots to choose from, So I always do single focus point, and I always move it around cause I always want to focus on the eyes in a situation on the left. That cat has a pretty flat face, and that's kind of like a pug. If you had a breed like that, if you focus on their nose or if you focus on their eyes, it doesn't really matter. Kind of generally the whole face is going to be in focus, especially when you're shooting. Like I said, I'm around F 5.6 F eight, but the docks and on the right, the distance between their nose and their eyes is so much bigger. So in that situation, and for you to focus on the nose, the eyes they're gonna be out of focus, so just make sure that you're always unless you're going for a no shot where they're looking up in the camera. But generally make sure you're focusing on the eyes again. That's what sells what's aware everyone today. Is that a really good job? Our owners that were here, I always recommend wearing solid colors, no busy patterns. What happens when you were a busy pattern is the eye goes directly to the owners close, and you're taking attention away from the animals. So you're always wanting people to complement their pets. The thing that's interesting. A pet photography When you have Children, for example, it's kind of nice if you have everyone in the same color and you can all be in like black tops and your face is kind of all pop out. But if you match your pets, they're not going to stand out in the portrait. So you always want to make sure that your contrast in colors, so the most extreme example would be if you have a black cat or a black dog, Don't worry black shirt, so it's kind of the most extreme example. But just to show you some examples on this screen, and I always actually recommend doing a 3/4 or a long sleeve. You saw the shot with the Weimaraner a couple pictures ago, and she was wearing a dress and it was sleeveless, and that was her style. And that's okay if that's kind of what matches people style. But generally I recommend doing 3/4 long sleeve solid colors and contrast in colors so you'll see the chocolate lab up there. If she was wearing a really dark color, that's just gonna be all shadow behind him. The next family. Bless his heart for wearing pink with his wife, so he has on. They both have pink on, and it's still cute. You don't have to dio Oh, we have to wear the same color, so we have to do both matching collar button up shirts. You can still get creative and, like she has like a really cute off the shoulder shirt. When you have lighter dogs, the family in the top, right? That's perfect. Black simple. Just don't do that. Like with the shepherds that were here, one of him and a lot of black in his face. So that just wouldn't be a good color for them. And she wore a light blue shirt, so that was perfect with them. So just some ideas. When people have darker animals, I generally say, if you have a black animal, don't wear black or white and some people think automatically. I have a dark animals should wear white well. What happens is you put so much of light on a black dog. Your shirt kind of looks like it's glowing. So when you look at the portrait, your eyes naturally drawn to the lightest part of the image. So when you have a right white glowing shirt, the tension is taken away from the animal and the attention is on your clothes. So you do wanna wear lighter color, but anything a little bit softer than white cream color. Kind of like what the gentleman is wearing in the portrait blue green, any of those colors, but I wouldn't recommend white. Um, it's white is much better than Black Lou. If you have clients who have a bunch of different animals, so they'll say I have ever color. I have a white animal. I have a tan animal, have a black animal. What do I wear? Wear color. No animal is green. Unless there like a chameleon. No animals pink. No animals purple. So any of those colors that they wear are gonna contrast with the pets. Quick question. You may have answered this already. Visual stories asked. Your main focusing point is always the animal. Even when you have a big group like this. Are you focusing on the animal all the time? Are you talking about camera function at this point like especially when you have three dogs and two people are Where do you What is your focus point? You know, in that situation, I want both the subjects to be in focus. Like if you're looking at the gentleman on the bottom with the one dog, his dogs more in front of him. So to me, it doesn't really matter who I focus on. Just shoot at an aperture that both of them are gonna be in focus. So just make sure that you're not shooting it. You know, f four F 2.8, where one of them is gonna be out of focus. So, in a group setting, I don't really pick an animal I don't pick the one in front of the one and back. I just focus on somebody in the group, Okay? And then just make sure that your aperture okay, Thank you. Yeah, sure. Kind of a follow up to that when you're shooting group images like the few that are on here. Um, I find typically, the client is focusing on the pet. And so the pet makes the great expression to get the perk years. And then, you know, the client's face is doing the duck face or totally something else. So do you try to coach them? Absolutely. For the shot to just focus on me. And all were ableto because a lot of people we'll be posing with their pets and the okay, Look at her like, okay. Pointing never works. Your dog is not gonna be looking Well, okay. I'll look at her so and don't, because that doesn't do anything because they were looking at your hand going wounded your hand doing so just coach. People just don't worry about them. I'll get their attention. Just keep your hands on them. Just keep looking at me. Yeah, just keep coaching them. It's kind of like when I see soup rice speak. Should I keep talking to them? Keep talking to them. Keep talking to them. So same thing. Just keep talking to them and coaching them. Focus. I mean, I'm gonna get their attention. I got it. No worries. Yeah, thanks. Okay. Holiday portrait. It's OK. So Holiday Portrait's. That's my busiest time. I'm sure being portrait photographers that your guys busiest time as well. The thing that's so important you guys want to make sure, especially when we're trying to run a profitable business. You don't want to shoot an entire portrait session on a holiday scene. You're not going to sell anything except holiday cards. No one wants to put a portrait of a Christmas tree above their fireplace and have it there year round. And for me, I have to sell Wall Portrait's to be profitable. I just have an initial session fee up front, and then I'm making my money and print sales so people are getting holiday cards. I'm not making any money, So what I do is I actually recommend that clients shoot sessions on neutral backgrounds, so let's pick something neutral and let's pick a really festive holiday hard. That's kind of a compromise. So that way, no one's gonna look at this portrait and go, Oh, well, you're missing a Christmas tree. No family members going to say that they just looking and go. Oh, my gosh is so beautiful and I love your car this year and whatever. So just pick a background that's a year round. And I always tell clients, I want you to have wall portrait that you can hang around. And if they really, really want it to be festive, I do have some props, like little Christmas boxes, little ornaments, a little Christmas hats, things like that do that with just the animals. So that way, when you flip the card open, you're like, OK, cute. We have a couple little shots like that. We did regular shots of the animals as well, but cute. Let me scatter some ornaments around, make you happy that we did a Christmas theme. But the family portrait's were shot in a neutral year. Round background makes sense, so you could not should have really festive holiday cards, but that's a way to sell more wall Portrait's during the holiday season. Another thing, too with that slide. If people are like, Oh, but it's the season and I want to be really festive bacon dress winery. They can have scarfs and boots and do all that, but it doesn't have to be a red and green Christmas tree portrait. It's like, Great, let's do little scarfs and let's do whatever. But it's still a year round portrait, please. I actually love that. We have, like a male at this workshop. Seriously, I was like, we have a guy, not a girl. Compliment. I'm lucky you're representing all the male pet photographers around the country in the world completely eso for the festive thing. Do you do like a mini session where you roll a bunch people people through with a like a holiday background? Then we do limited edition portrait specials, which I'm gonna be talking about. Maybe tomorrow, um, way, do something called Christmas in September. So it is a shorter session when we do many sessions like that's a short 10 minute session. We edit the images right away and we present them right away. We don't make as much money on our limited edition or many sessions, so we do them but I don't commit as much time to them because I'm not gonna give us much time, so I'm not making as much money on them. So I do edit them right away, present them right away. They order. They're still getting the photography experience. So we we do do that just Christmas September, though it's not October November that you could get a discount. October November you're paying full price, so it's just to get people in early on. A lot of times, it's to get the holiday card people out of the way, because some people, no matter what you do there just holiday card people. Yeah, specifically So client base that wants just that, Yeah, dog with the Easter Bunny. And sure, and that's actually coming up in our next slide. It's funny that you say that Easter Bunny ears OK, yeah, that's coming up. But, yeah, just people that want that and some people aren't going to get well. Portrait's and I don't have minimums at my studio. So if you have minimums and you just kind of avoid that altogether because you go, you can't get holiday card so you spend $800 or whatever, but I don't have that. I just have my initial session fee and then clients or ordering portrait's and I do all the cart. They don't do packages. And, um, our average sale is between one and $2000 for a client. So I was They were around, you know, 12 $1500 kind of a normal sale for us. Sometimes, of course, we have clients. They're spending 34 $5000. But some things we have clients who are spending 56 $700. So it's it's really about giving them the experience and with people who want to do those sessions, try and get them to do many session, not a full session. You don't want to shoot a full hour long session for holiday cards, so I and the next actually this slide. I'm talking about the different types of portrait sessions that I offer, so that's one of things that we implemented because I don't want to shoot. If you're eight by 10. Client. I don't want to shoot for an hour if all you're getting is an eight by 10. But sometimes I didn't have different sessions. I just had Here's the one session that I offer. I felt obligated to shoot those for them. Sounded Answer your question a little bit. Yeah. So you're gonna go more to your business model? Yeah. Later today and tomorrow. Question. Karen, what's more in the line of your session, are you Do you find that any during your initial consultation? And they say, Oh, I just want to eight by 10. And then you take some pictures and they're actually electing to get some wall portrait's. Do you find that? I'm gonna answer your question after this slide. Great. There. Okay, so that's a great question. Um, I'm so excited for that slide. It's a good one. OK, it's coming up. Let's talk about different types of portrait sessions that we have the answer. The reason so excited. The answer is when things were happening in your business. This is a quote ready Twitter. When things were happening in your business that you're not happy with, it's your fault. Do something about it. Make a change. Don't just complain about your clients. Don't just go. Oh, my clients weren't prepared. Why didn't you do a better job preparing them? So we're gonna talk about that Easter bunny ears. Eight by 10. Clients will talk about that