Digital Focus: Photograph Your Pets

For animal lovers only... plus, caring for digital images and making posters.

Dave Johnson

Feature: Shoot Your Pets

After my 6-month-old puppy finished consuming my prized Beatles sheet music, I was strongly inclined to go buy a gun--but as soon as I calmed down I realized that shooting pets with a digital camera is a much better idea.

Actually, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if pets were the single most commonly photographed subject. As many as a third of all the Hot Pic of the Week photo submissions I get are scenes of cats, dogs, birds, and rabbits. Some are wearing hats. Others have plunged into the Sunday roast when no one was looking. Most, though, were captured while lounging around doing little more than looking oh-so-cute. So this week, I thought I'd offer a few tips to capture your pets looking their best.

Stoop to Their Level

The best pictures are often shot at the subject's own eye level. When I photograph kids, I kneel down. When I photograph dogs and cats, I usually lie down on the floor. The problem? If you lie down, your dog is likely to rush over and start licking your face. That's why I like digital cameras that "twist." You can hold a camera like the Nikon CoolPix 995 or the Casio QV-2900UX low to the floor, but remain upright and see the scene through the angled LCD screen. You simply can't do that with a film camera--so score one for digital!

Focus on the Eyes

That says it all. When you prepare to take the picture, be sure you point the camera directly into the animal's eyes, press down slightly on the shutter release, and hold it there. That'll lock in the focus; after that, compose your picture and then press down the rest of the way on the shutter release.

Animal eyes are often so large and expressive that a picture doesn't appear to be in focus unless the eyes are sharp and distinct. Consciously think about focusing on the eyes. If you don't, you'll end up focusing on the tip of your pet's nose, and the eyes will end up slightly out of focus.

Lighting Is Key

You probably already know that I'm a big fan of natural lighting, and pet photography is one of those situations where I really think that using electronic flash is a bad idea. The best lighting is indirect, such as what you find indoors away from a window or outside in the shade. Very bright sunlight creates harsh colors, and electronic flash is worse. It can cause the dreaded red-eye effect. And trust me: There's nothing creepier than a dog with red eye. Since animals have greater visual acuity in the dark than humans, their red-eye effect can be quite pronounced.

Freeze the Action

Last, but certainly not least, give some thought to stopping the action. If your digital camera allows it, switch to shutter priority, the "action" program, or manual mode, and shoot with the fastest shutter speed your camera allows. Animals are fickle creatures, and they can go from napping or being transfixed by a reflection on the floor to hunting mode in a heartbeat. A fast shutter speed and a steady hand can help you capture that one perfect image of little Puddles.

Dave's Favorites: Club Photo's Poster Printing

I use Club Photo as an online photo album to display many of my favorite photos for friends and family. The site isn't free anymore--it charges a small annual fee--but that's okay by me. After all, those folks have to eat, too. Of course, Club Photo does a lot more than just show off your digital images.

One of the site's key features is photo printing. If you click on the Buy Gifts tab at the top of the page, for instance, you'll see a lot of ways to print your pictures--on cookies, clothing, jewelry, and yes, even on paper. I recently tried Club Photo's poster-printing service, and was thrilled with the results.

If an 8-by-10-inch print isn't good enough for you, give the indoor or outdoor posters a shot. Club Photo can make a 16-by-20-, 20-by-30-, or 24-by-36-inch print from a digital photo that you upload directly to the site. I decided to make a 20-by-30-inch poster from a picture that I recently shot while scuba diving in Honduras, and the results were stunning. The site guides you through the whole process, and even tells you what the minimum resolution is to get a decent poster (for a 20-by-30-inch poster, for example, you need an image that's at least 1536 by 1024 pixels). The final product arrives in a heavy-duty poster tube a few days later.

I even like Club Photo's customer service. When my poster arrived, I found the tube had been crimped in shipping and the poster was creased. I sent an e-mail to the staffers at Club Photo and they responded immediately by sending me another copy of the poster, this time double-packed in two tubes for extra protection.

Q&A: Keep Your JPEGs From Degrading

Thanks to your newsletter, I now understand the "lossy" effect of JPEG compression. What I am unsure of is this: For this loss of quality to occur, do I actually have to open a picture and then hit a Save button? If I just want to look at my pictures will I be subjecting them each time to this loss? I want the ability to easily view my pictures, yet print them at the highest possible quality. So should I convert them all the TIFF files? I'd rather not do that because TIFFs are so much bigger.

--Mike Wood, Naples, Florida

Great question, Mike. Let's be clear: Any compressed JPEG has already lost some information in the process of compression. Fortunately, the vast majority of images still look quite good after being initially saved as a compressed JPEG. But if you alter or edit the image and save it again as a JPEG, the second round of information loss may result in more degradation. However, there's no loss to the original JPEG if you open it with an image viewer or image editor and simply look at it without re-saving the file. That brings up a second question: Should you save all your images as TIFF files to preserve the highest possible image quality?

Pragmatic as always, my advice is to save photos in TIFF format only if you plan to edit them later. If they are just going to sit on your hard disk and perhaps be printed eventually, there's no reason to waste the additional hard disk space that TIFF files take up. Most of the images on my hard disk are JPEGs, and they tend to provide very satisfactory image quality. If I decide I want to play with a JPEG image, though, I convert it to TIFF before I start sharpening, softening, changing colors, or using the clone tool to erase parts of the image I don't like. If you have a bunch of TIFF files and you want to archive them while saving a significant amount of disk space, you can often compress them to a third or less of their original size by archiving them in a Zip or StuffIt format.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.

A gentle reminder, folks: We disqualify some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions don't follow the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in your e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.

This Week's Hot Pic: "Homecoming," by Howard Schiff, Roslyn, New York

Howard Schiff is no stranger to our winner's circle. He won in January with another composite image, that one of a sea gull taking to flight against a dramatic skyscape.

About this week's subtle composite image, Howard says: "The picture of the house was taken in Ouray, Colorado. I borrowed the image of the man coming home from an ad for 'Death of a Salesman.' I then adjusted his size and added him to the scene. Also, the original sky was rather bland so I substituted a different one to give it a gloomy appearance."

Hot Pic of the Month

Each month we choose one of our weekly winners to be the Hot Pic of the Month. For February we chose "Duck Party," by Dan Brandenburg, a silly picture with a lot of punch. Dan, who hails from Lexington, Kentucky, has won a PC World CD-carrying case. Congratulations to all the other weekly winners, as well. Keep entering, and your photo might be featured here soon!

We want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about the newsletter itself to comments@bydavejohnson.com. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered in the weekly Q&A, send it to question@bydavejohnson.com.

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