Posted By: abbeyroo
Lighting in Pet Photography - 01/19/12 05:27 PM
Hey everyone!
I currently volunteer to take photos of rescue dogs and am using it as a practice before I actually dive into opening a business. These photos are taken at a chosen person's house which is a great scenario to put myself into.
When I went to my first shoot, I really wanted to go with natural lighting so I didn't even bother to pull out my external flash at this time. However, I realized that it was quite difficult to reach a level of light that I wanted in the photos. I shot as wide open as I could, typically f/1.8 or f/2.8 and it still didn't bring in enough light, even with a big window. Using high ISO is not ideal because I could already see the graininess at ISO 800 so I am also trying to avoid doing this. I felt there was no other way for me to get the amount of light I needed unless I used a flash. The photos improved a lot and have been shooting this way since, BUT I would still like to make the photos look more natural.
The photos I currently take have a very studio style look which is fine. There are some cases when I don't mind this, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me if there is a way to achieve a natural look even with a flash without sacrificing much of the shutter speed? Dogs move everywhere so it's important for me to be able to have a high shutter speed to avoid blur from a very curious and active puppy. What would I have to do? Any thoughts and suggestions would be great and appreciated!
Thank you!
I currently volunteer to take photos of rescue dogs and am using it as a practice before I actually dive into opening a business. These photos are taken at a chosen person's house which is a great scenario to put myself into.
When I went to my first shoot, I really wanted to go with natural lighting so I didn't even bother to pull out my external flash at this time. However, I realized that it was quite difficult to reach a level of light that I wanted in the photos. I shot as wide open as I could, typically f/1.8 or f/2.8 and it still didn't bring in enough light, even with a big window. Using high ISO is not ideal because I could already see the graininess at ISO 800 so I am also trying to avoid doing this. I felt there was no other way for me to get the amount of light I needed unless I used a flash. The photos improved a lot and have been shooting this way since, BUT I would still like to make the photos look more natural.
The photos I currently take have a very studio style look which is fine. There are some cases when I don't mind this, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me if there is a way to achieve a natural look even with a flash without sacrificing much of the shutter speed? Dogs move everywhere so it's important for me to be able to have a high shutter speed to avoid blur from a very curious and active puppy. What would I have to do? Any thoughts and suggestions would be great and appreciated!
Thank you!