How I get the dogs to pose

[rpcrowe]

Paul David asked:

"I'd still like to know how you folks here get those dogs to pose. My dog growls whenever she sees me with a camera."

Prancer is the young puppy whose jaw was broken as a result of being kicked. He has had his jaw taped in place for three weeks and has just recently been freed from the tape. Starting to shoot him, the results were terrible. He had no interest in looking at me and kept jumping around...

I tried my usual ploys, treats and squeak toys to no avail. I was just about ready to call it a day when I made a silly noise. That instantly got his attention resulting in this trio of images which I think might make a nice triptych...







He stayed quite still for a closeup also...



I could never have done this without my wife's help in holding him with the show lead.

Basically our technique is to let the dog do whatever it wants to do and hope for a decent pose...

[Shadowman]

Nice info and captures.

[NorthernFocus]

These are awesome, Richard. Thanks for the explanation as well.

[LePetomane]

Richard, Thanks. I will give it a whirl this weekend. I did catch her off guard the other day.



I am going to try manual focus. I think the beep of the autofocus upsets her.

[KimC]

Oh my, that dog could not be any more adorable Richard!

[madcrow]

Richard, I think very few could match your skills when it comes to shooting dogs. They are great and beautiful images.

[rpcrowe]

Thanks all. One thing that I have to my advantage, there are lots and lots of dogs coming through our house as fosters and lots of dogs that I have the opportunity to shoot for others. As in all shooting, the more you do it, the easier it becomes

I did a series of shots of this Champion Boxer sire and his two pups for my friend who raises these great dogs.

This was a grab shot that I did, during a studio shoot, when I noticed the little one looking adoringly at the dad... I was actually positioning myself to shoot my setup including the owner of these boxers and my wife who were controlling them for the shot.



I was paying more attention to the setup than the dogs, which is why I inadvertently clipped off the foot of the nearest puppy and why I shot from a higher point than I usually do

However, while editing the portion of the image I wanted, I also cloned a part of dad's foot onto the puppy...



Here are my bridge thumbnails for that shoot...



This has got to be one of my all-time favorite shots. It was a combination of a stroke of luck and being ready. There is no way in the world that I could have purposefully posed these two pups in this manner...



This would not have been as good of a shot if I had not been lucky enough to catch the eyes of both dogs in the image. Shooting with studio strobes, I was not in burst mode so this is a single shot!

[madcrow]

Fabulous image and great narrative. One word, outstanding.

[rpcrowe]

In adoptions, pictures are worth a thousand words. We have a person flying to California from Chicago a distance of 2,076 miles to meet (and likely adopt) Prancer

Here is another image of Prancer...