The bright midday summer sun is always a challenge in photography but here is one simple way to make a difficult situation work for you.

If you have a concrete driveway that is in partial shade it is common for dogs to lay just inside the shade on the cool part.

If you approach from the shade side and either spot meter or use manual mode you can produce high key pictures with ease.

The sun lit cement background will overexpose and go almost pure white without the need to actually set up a white lighted background.

Once you learn the trick it becomes easy, I have attached a snapshot of a friends dog I made on a casual visit, I wish I would have wiped her eye gunk first and stopped down so that both eyes were in focus.

This works best on dark dogs, as you can see how the white blaze on this dogs neck starts to be lost into the background. That would have been less noticeable had I not overexposed the frame by about one to two thirds of a stop.

Best of luck,

Greg