Photographing animals

[mmcirvin]

paracelsvs asked how to take good pictures of cats. I don't consider myself that great a photographer, certainly not compared to a pro like, say, Photodude who has good equipment and pro-level knowledge and stuff, but I think I've picked up a few things.

The big problem with animals is that they move around. You can get around this with a flash (my action pictures of jumping cats are obviously flash photos), but photos taken by amateurs with built-in flashes on little cameras usually do not look very good. The flash is right there next to the lens, which causes ugliness in several different ways, and it is typically not very powerful, so the background ends up gloomy.

So it helps to wait for situations in which (1) they're moving around less than usual, and (2) you've got a lot of light. Cats are usually kind of groggy in the middle of the day, when they aren't entirely asleep, so that's your best bet with them. Sunlight streaming in the window works wonders, especially if you can get it coming from mostly behind you.

Also, I imagine it helps to have a pricey camera with a big honking lens so you can get away with a shorter exposure time, but I wouldn't know from direct experience.

The other big problem with animals is that they usually won't pose for you. The key here is just to take dozens or hundreds of shots, and select only the very best ones for public presentation. It's the only way. Digital cameras make this easy.

I like super-close-up macro photos. For some reason, Nikon digicams specialize in being good at this out of the box. That's the only thing I do that depends at all on the type of camera I have.

Finally, you probably don't need this advice, but I find that my very best photos, of animals or of anything else, are usually brought about largely by post-processing. Learn how to tweak them in Photoshop or GIMP or a rough equivalent. Most of the time I don't have to do anything more than color and brightness correction (with the "levels" and "curves" functions that all good photo editors have), and cropping the picture. But it's possible to get fancier if you want to; one ultra-close-up of Radka that I posted to ratemykitten.com had an enormous booger digitally removed from her nose.

You can often do amazing things just by leaving in some margins and cropping your way to a more interesting composition later. That picture of Radka on the yellow bedspread has always frustrated me because her feet and tail were just out of frame; that was a mistake I made when I took the picture. I should have erred on the side of leaving a little more in, then cropped it down.

Comments

Animal posing.

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

Animals may not pose, much, but a lot of animals (cats emphatically included) seem to spend their whole lives posed for an invisible camera.

When I did my trip down to Africa, the hardest animals to get a good shot of were the warthogs, which (1) could friggin' book, and (2) tended to run directly away from the jeep at top speed as soon as it came around.

Elephants, on the other hand, just stood around shifting from pose to pose urging you to kill your batteries on them.

Re: Animal posing.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

a lot of animals (cats emphatically included) seem to spend their whole lives posed for an invisible camera.


Yes, I was going to mention that... Sam's mom's cat Freya is one of those.

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

One rule I generally use is, get down on the floor, if they're down there. My favorite picture of my doggie couldn't have happened if I hadn't gotten face-down on the floor.

I looked kinda silly taking it. Surprise.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

AWWWW PUPPY!@#!!@#@!!@