It is a well-known fact that we love our dogs nearly as much as our family (possibly more!), so it is always wonderful when the opportunity arises to create pictures of our best friends.
In this video, we walk through various ideas for capturing our canine companions, from taking a stroll to finding unusual angles.
Enjoy.
Transcript:
Well, if I’m brutally honest, there’s nothing I like more than creating portraits. Mostly of people, but equally of dogs, having spent the past decade working with hearing dogs here in the UK. And I’ve won as many awards, and I’m as well known for our dog portrait photography as I am for the human form.
And in this class, we’re going to take five ideas for photographing dogs and their owners. I’m Paul Wilkinson, an award winning photographer based here in the UK. And in this class, we’re going to take the simplest of kit, one camera, one lens, one dog, one owner, a bag of treats, as it turns out, quite a lot of dog slobber, and we’re going to go out and see what we can create just using daylight, the environment, our eyes, and our ideas.
For this class, we have Elton. Who is a hearing dog stud, lucky boy, and we have Sarah, his owner, and we’re going to take the pair of them out into the village no more than a couple of hundred metres from our studio door, and just see what we can create. The weather today, well, the weather today is up and down, but what we do know is it’s going to be hot, it’s going to be over 24 degrees.
Now If you live in other parts of the world with hot climes, 24 degrees doesn’t seem like much. But that is the threshold for dog welfare where we have to start being just a little bit careful of how much time we spend particularly on hot tarmac or out in the open sun. So we’re going to keep an eye on that.
And what I want to capture in this class is the joy of the dog, the beauty of dogs. I’ve got a dog. I love being around dogs. And so it’s really, it’s a really lovely thing to be able to create unique. so today I want to create interesting and beautiful pictures of Elton. He’s a gorgeous dog. But also the relationship between him and Sarah.
Four years ago I worked with Sarah to take pictures of Elton as a puppy. I was working with hearing dogs, we were out in the open. It was during a lockdown, if you remember a small little thing called COVID, we were out in the open taking pictures And little did either of us know that that one puppy would become Sarah’s lifelong companion.
So I want to create some pictures that capture just a little bit of that. We’re going to find some…