PET PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS – PLAYING, RUNNING, TUGGING, OOPS!

I’ve been practising my action pet photography lately, instead of sweet images of pets sitting quietly and looking angelic, I’ve been trying out a bit of running, jumping and playing shots.  If you’d like to try this with your own pets, use their favorite toy or initiate their favorite game to get some fun images.

Paddy and Ruby’s favorite game is chasing after the bright orange disc and then playing tug of war with it.

Taking of images of your pets playing often helps to highlight their personalities but it’s not always as easy as it looks.  If  you want to freeze motion you need a shutterspeed of at least 1/250th of second if the pet is moving straight towards you and for side to side or up and down images you need between 1/500th to 1/1000 of a second…

Shame, poor Paddington has been in the wars recently, first he broke a dewclaw and no sooner had that healed than he sprained his paw playing with the orange disc.  The following trilogy of images shows the moment he sprained his front paw – images 1, 2, 3  from left to right.

1. Playing and having fun but as soon as he lands he hurts his paw
2. Oops! somethings wrong, Paddy comes to a screeching halt
3. He holds the hurt leg in the air, “Mom, Mom my left paw is hurting, fix it quick!”

My poor handsome boy, I couldn’t “fix it quick” and it took a couple of days of limping around and feeling sad (Paddy not me) before we were able to go our walks again.

All my love

moi♥