How to Take Picture Perfect Valentine's Day Photos of your Dog
This could be a “How To Take Picture Perfect Valentine’s Day Photos of your Dog” and also “What Not To Do!”
My dog model is Jeff, our new dog. We adopted him in October. He’s still figuring out this model thing and I’m still figuring out how to best work with him.
5 Tips for Taking Photos of your Dog:
Be ready. Have your camera or phone ready to snap the photo. If you’re lucky, your dog will hold his pose. A lot of dogs won’t so you need to be ready. You may only have a quick second when he’s looking directly at you and his ears are perked up.
Use treats. If your dog is treat motivated, holding a treat in your hand helps you direct his gaze.
Clean up your house. If you’re taking photos of your own dog inside your house, clean up the area where you will be. Remove any distractions from the background.
Buy a Valentine themed dog sweater, bandana or hat. This one is from Anthropologie and I loved it when I saw it online.
Be patient. If your dog is new to modeling like Jeff is, he probably doesn’t understand what you want him to do so be patient with him. Only work with him for short periods of time. Reward him for his good behavior.
Here’s What NOT To Do:
As you can see, I didn’t remove the distractions in the background. Up until this point, Jeff had been sitting and I was standing up over him so the background was the rug underneath him. (See the photo at the top of the page.) When he laid down, there were lots of distractions in the background. There are table legs and the yellow sheet on the sofa in the background. See the photo above where I edited out the table legs and yellow sheet. That was a pain! (The dogs have taken over the sofa so I keep a sheet on it to protect it from dog fur.)
Buy a sweater that actually fits. This is the largest size Anthropologie had and I loved the sweater so I kept it. It would fit a dog smaller than 52 pounds better.
Jeff’s ears are also not in an ideal position in this photo so be ready to take multiple snaps. These are his silly ears. His right eye is also looking a bit wonky.
To summarize, make picture taking fun for your dog and have patience. If the photos look picture perfect to you, that’s all that matters and I’m pretty happy with the photo at the top of this page.
My cute boy is on his way to becoming an excellent dog model but until then, he provides a lot of entertainment.