Hey guys, welcome back to another video.
Today we wanted to share some tips and tricks
for taking the best photos of your dog
specifically for Instagram.
We get a lot of questions through DM and email
asking on what equipment we should use.
If I have any tips for taking better photos of the dogs.
Today I thought I would share some of the things
I've learned from taking photos of Kokoro and Chibi
throughout the years.
So I didn't start taking photos until I think it was 2013,
when this little nugget came into our lives.
The photos that I took of her when she was a puppy,
they weren't that pretty(laughs ),
they kind of looked like this.
There were shots where I was way too close to her,
the angles were kind of weird,
the shadow and the lighting was weird.
Back then I was shooting on a Panasonic Lumix GF3
with a portrait lens, and I knew very little
about the right equipment.
And so things just started to grow from there.
One of the first things that will make your life
a lot easier, is teaching your dog a good sit and stay.
You really wanna master this,
teach it to them from when they're a puppy
regardless of whether you're gonna take
photos of 'em or not.
It's just really good basic obedience.
But it makes things a lot easier when your dog
has a really confident sit, stay and you can trust that
they will stay there until you release them for your photo.
Once your dog has a good sit, you can work up
the difficulty level and practice with some distractions.
So put them in a sit stay,
throw some treats around them,
make weird noises, throw words at them
that aren't their release word.
You can even have strangers walk by
and mimic what might happen when you're taking photos
of your dogs in the wild.
So number one master the sit and stay.
The next set of tips is geared around getting
the best expressions out of your dogs.
So teach them how to bark is a really good way
to get them to change up their expression
when they're just sitting or set up in a position
where you wanna photograph them,
teaching them to bark on cue.
And using bursts to capture their entire facial expressions
from where their mouths are closed,
and when they're ope, usually get some pretty good results.
Also know your dog's trigger words.
So for example, with our dogs, if we say, "do you want"
or is it time for and using the words dinner and treat,
it really gets them to be engaged and have them
look directly at the camera where you're shooting.
Sometimes if I'm lucky, I even get a head tilt out of it.
So use your dog's trigger words, words that they like,
talk to them and communicate with them as you're shooting.
This also helps a lot when you're out and about shooting
your dogs whether there's other distractions around,
a lot of the times we run into situations where a Kokoro's
hears or folded back,
and I kinda think that they're cuter
when they're facing forward, facing the camera.
So using these trigger words,
usually gets her to turn her ears towards me
and it makes for a better shot.
Don't forget to use squeakers and sounds to your advantage.
I for one, am not really that great at making animal sounds.
So I usually keep a squeaker or small toy
that they really like in my pocket or in my bag,
and I can just pull that out and squeak it
to get their attention.
Don't be afraid to use multiple tactics
because your dog might get tired or bored of that trigger,
they might not respond to you asking them 10 times
if it's dinnertime.
So having a few different devices is usually helpful.
Another great way to get them to have some really funny
facial expressions is to use peanut butter
or honey or yogurt, or something that's sort of like
a gooey liquid that you can put on their noses.
This is one of our favorite tricks,
you're bound to get one or two gold gems out of this.
One thing that you can also do is decide
on a consistent style that represents you and your work.
So for us, it's very clean and bright and minimal and airy.
I like taking photos of a lot of white space.
And that's something that I've been working on
since we started photographing Kokoro.
It's nice when your body of work sort of reflects
the same consistent aesthetic and style.
So it could be that maybe you wanna take
action shots of your dogs while you're out hiking,
and you have a really low aperture and gorgeous bokeh.
Whatever the style is sticking to one for a while
and practicing it will help you improve your photography
and editing skills.
Alright, so lighting.
Lighting is the next thing I wanna talk about.
Daylight is your friend,
especially when photographing animals,
natural sunlight works really really well
for bringing up the highlights in their eyes,
really complementing their fur.
We take pretty much all of our photos during the daytime
with natural lighting.
A lot of photos that we take at home are close to a window
where natural light can get in.
Sunlight really is your friend in dogs to shoot amazingly
in natural lighting.
This doesn't necessarily mean that you can't use
studio lighting.
A lot of professional photographers make amazing portraits
of dogs with studio lighting.
It's just a little trickier to get it
in the right positioning for them to look good all the time.
And if you're just taking photos for Instagram,
I highly recommend you use as much natural light as you can.
When you're outside, we love a good sunny day
especially here in LA, but try to stay in the shade
if there's too much harsh sunlight coming directly
onto your dog,
there might be a lot of harsh shadows from their ears.
So we always try to look for a shaded area
when we're out and about taking photos of the dogs outdoors.
Our next tip for getting really creative,
unique photos is playing with different angles.
This is really something that I've been working on
for many, many years trying to figure out
what cool new angles and perspectives I can use
to share photos of the dogs.
For example, I have this one photo where I put the camera
inside the bottom of a glass jar,
stuck some treats around the edges of it
and had the dogs wait until I release them,
and then told them okay, go get the treat.
And as soon as they put their noses into the glass jar,
I snapped some photos.
So you really got this cool perspective of them looking down
into the jar.
There are also other cool trends that I've noticed,
including covering your dog's face
and really just having their snout show,
and using some sort of props.
So we've done it with peeps for Easter,
we've done it for Christmas.
And it just makes for a really cute and unique photo
that when you're scrolling through your feed,
the person kind of goes "Oh, what's that?"
Just always trying to think about different ways
that you can get unique angles and different perspectives
to really highlight the personality of your dog.
A really good general rule of thumb
is to get on your dog's level.
So a lot of times, I would get on my stomach
even if I'm outside to get a really good shot
straight on to them. You can also play with top down
or bird's eye view angles, which works really well
on Instagram as well.
When you're shooting, utilize the burst mode
or even video, to capture shots.
Especially with dogs,
they're constantly moving, their expressions are changing.
So it's a really good idea to utilize first
so that you're capturing as many frames as possible,
and that you have a lot of shots to pick from to share.
Some of the best shots on my Instagram are actually frames
taken from videos.
So for example, this photo of Kokoro,
I wanted to get a shot of her different facial expressions
as confetti was falling on her fourth birthday themed photo.
But I didn't have enough hands to throw the confetti,
take the bad shots, and manage where she was sitting
all at the same time.
So I ended up setting up my camera on a tripod,
putting it on video, and then throwing the confetti
to capture just the video.
And in the end, I just pulled this one frame from the video
that was shot.
The only thing to know with video is that
you're not gonna get as high quality of an image
when you're pulling a frame,
and luckily, that's not really a big issue
because for Instagram, you're just exporting
at 1080 by 1080 pixels.
Another thing that we run into a lot,
especially with Chibi is she takes working very seriously.
So photoshoots I like to work for her.
And so she tends to get this very serious look on her face,
she closes her mouth, and she's just focused on,
what do I need to do to get the treat?
So a lot of the times to get her to smile,
I'll take her favorite toy, play some time with her
for about five minutes, or even just run up and down
the hallway with her for a few laps.
And once you get them sort of running and panting,
that looks like a nice happy smile that you can capture
for your photo.
Okay, the next tip is something I strongly believe in,
don't be afraid to edit to tell a good story.
So I know there's a lot of stuff out there
about photoshopping and faking images,
especially with models, and travel images and sort of
just selling this false idea, especially the dogs,
I feel like this is kind of an area
where you have an opportunity to edit
and tell an even better story.
So before I got into photography,
I actually was much more of an avid user of Photoshop,
with a lot of my photos,
I will use editing to clean it up a little bit,
take out things that I don't want in the photo,
sometimes even swap out a dog's face,
if I'm taking a photo of Kokoro and Chibi,
and one looks good on one shot
and the other good looks on the other shot,
I'll sort of merge them together so that,
that one last photo that I'm sharing is telling the story
that I want it to.
Don't be afraid to think of an idea
and take a photo that isn't actually gonna be
what you're gonna end up sharing.
If it's sort of a good stepping stone towards the story
that you wanna tell, go for it.
One of the examples on my feet is this photo of Kokoro,
and the spike and the balloons,
I really wanted to showcase a sort of whimsical feeling
of having the bike or Kokoro being lifted by the balloons.
So we got the bike, we got the balloons,
and we tied it to the bike.
And my partner actually held the bike up
and I ended up photoshopping come out in the end
to get the end result.
Using the right equipment is also very important.
And this is something that took me a lot of time to learn.
As I said before, I'm not a professional photographer.
I'm just sort of learning things as I go via YouTube,
and Google and learning from other photographers
on Instagram.
When I first started taking photos of Kokoro,
I was essentially using a mirrorless camera
that had the equivalent of a 90 millimeter focal length,
as that number for the focal length goes up,
the further away you have to be from your subject.
So imagine having a puppy that's restless,
that's moving a lot and then you sit them in their spot
and then you have to back up six to eight feet
to even take a good shot of them,
you're likely gonna lose that opportunity
in the time that you're backing up.
So having a lens with a shorter focal length,
will allow for you to be closer to the dog
when you're taking the time photo.
A lot of the shots on my Instagram over the past few years
have been taken on this camera.
It is a Lumix GX8 Micro 4/3 camera,
the lens that I have on here is a 20MM, F1.7.
And so this is actually a really good focal length
for being really close to the dog.
And because the F-stop is so low,
we can get that really nice, soft background effect.
The last tip that I have for you guys is their favorite tip.
Give your dog lots and lots of treats.
So we always treat, (laughs)"did I say any word?"
I said the word treat.
We always treat photoshoots as working time
and training time for the dogs.
So whenever we have them do anything for a photo,
they always get rewarded for tons and tons of praise
and treats.
Ultimately, you don't wanna make your dog do anything
that they don't want to do.
And you just want the photoshoot to be a good experience
for both you and them.
That wraps it up for the tips that we have
to share this week on taking the best photos of your dog
specifically for Instagram.
Thank you guys for watching and don't forget to like
and subscribe if you enjoy this video.
Feel free to leave us a question or a comment,
if you have any of your own tips to share or have any ideas
or requests for videos in the future. Bye