I’ve been dog sitting some dogs after they had a litter of puppies. I figured that I don’t have any dog and puppy pictures in my collection yet, so I might as well use this experience as a reason to pull out my camera and shoot. The father, Kodiak is the large St. Bernard while the mother, Tamaya, is both a St. Bernard and English Mastiff. The puppies were born on Christmas day and there are eight of them. I find it easy enough to find interesting photographic opportunities with adult dogs, but the puppies tend to do one of two things at this early stage; they’re either sleeping or nursing. The puppies are now starting to move around and open their eyes though, so I figure that I’ll have some more creative opportunities in the near future.
I find that many people try to shoot animals from what I’d call a human perspective. People tend to stand when they compose and inevitably look down at the animal or use a telephoto lens to take photos from a distance. I try to shoot animals by getting down to their level, so to speak, and usually use a wide angle lens. If you think about how a dog or a cat sees the world from where they stand, then it is obviously very different from our own perspective. The dog or cat will be closer to tables, chairs and other furniture that may be in the shot, sometimes with the furniture towering over them. The question is then, as a human, what sort of photo are we taking when we’re towering even over the furniture, let alone the animal? Most of these dog photos were taken either while on my knees or laying on my stomach. I think it’s important to remember that composition isn’t just something seen through the viewfinder of the camera, but also depends on where you, the photographer, choose to be. Zooming out with a telephoto lens will make a photo feel distant due to depth compression and the fact that the photos are usually composed head on, but getting up close to the subject allows for some creative perspectives and a closeness that is simply not otherwise possible.
