General tips for photographing animals

The quality of the portrait will depend on the quality of the photograph.
I don't know the animal myself, and I will have to work with the visual information
I get through the photograph. Therefore the image must have a minimal size
of 960 x 1280 pixels. Some tips:

Lighting

Daylight is best, but direct sunlight can be very bright and it makes the contrast between light and shadow often too high. A bright cloudy day is perfect. In this day and age, digital camera's all have a full automatic setting and it's perfectly fine to trust the camera with the choice of shutter-time and iso- and diaphragm number. If it's not possible to take the picture outside you best option is to take it next to a large window. Make sure that the light form the window shines a little from the side and a little from the front to prevent that onde side of the animal gets to dark and the other side to light. Please do not flash!!!! You can turn on some electric lights in the room as an extra.

Positioning/point of view

Take the photograph at eye-level with the animal. People are much taller than cats and dogs and a picture taken from "above" is usually not pretty, it deforms the proportions and I cannot change the point of view.

Composition

The image must be at least 960 x 1280 pixels, but 'm sure you will understand that if
the picture shows a tiny dog in a huge meadow that all these pixels won't help much. That would be 800 x 1000 pixels of "grass" Make sure that the animal takes up the biggest part of the frame. I can leave out elements, so it will be perfectly alright if someone would hold your horse for example, be sure however that nothing blocks the view on the animal.

Scharpness

The picture has to be perfectly sharp. You can check out the sharpness of the photograph by zooming in on it on the camera or a computer.

Finally

It has to be a photograph that really appeals to you, and it has to reflect the personality of the animal, so make sure the animal is relaxed. Often the animal gets distracted by
the camera or all the attention, but a zoom lens can work miracles in that case. Photographing animals is not easy but these day's, thanks to the digital photography, it's possible to take a lot of pictures and to look at the result right away...So with a little patience you will always succeed...Good luck!!

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