Pet and Animal Photography

Your clients love their pets and they go to you to immortalize their furry, feathered or scaly little friend. So, how do you get the best possible pet portrait for them? If your photos need some retouching, our highly trained photo enhancement artists can digitally:

1. Eliminate red eye
2. Remove background distractions
3. Color correct and adjust lighting
4. Crop and resize images to improve detail and composition
5. Remove stains around eyes (common in dogs with white fur)
6. Isolate the pet and move to another background

As you know, photographing animals can be difficult. They don't always stay still, they don't say cheese, and they can even be camera shy. But once you have the perfect pose captured, you'll be happy you were patient. After all, your great pet portrait will bring a smile to your customer's face on even the worst day. Let Photofix help you make that smile a little brighter.

Pet and Animal Photo Tips

Here comes the groomer. Ask your clients to bring you a clean, well-groomed animal. Make sure the fur is combed, which will eliminate mats, loose hair and add a nice sheen the camera will pick up on. If you are working with a dog or cat with upright ears, make sure the ears are cleaned and camera ready. You don't know what angle the best shot will come from, but if the pet is clean, you won't have to throw out a great pose just because the camera caught some pet grime.

How Photofix can help: If Fluffy wasn't spic-and-span, but your shot is priceless, send it to us, and we can hide dirt and grime, a stray leaf stuck to the fur, or tear stains around the eyes (so common in white-fur animals). We can also sharpen the detail and brighten the fur or coloration of the pet to make it look its best.

Get down on Fido's level. If you can, try to take the photo at the pet's eye level, focusing on the eyes. People naturally gravitate to photos focused on the eyes, and this style of photography captures more detail and conveys more of a pet's personality than one taken from a human perspective.

How Photofix can help: We can crop or resize any image and enlarge any portion of the image to bring emphasis to the eyes or any desired area.

Light up their lives. Lighting is crucial to making a good photograph, and in the case of pet photography, natural, outdoor light is ideal. Try to take photographs of pets outdoors when the sun is bright, but not directly overhead, as in the late morning or late afternoon. You want the light to be even and not too harsh, so that it neither washes out the detail of the animal nor casts harsh shadows.

How Photofix can help: If the pet is photographed indoors with a flash, red eye (which looks more like “reflector eye,” as it's often not red) is a very common occurrence. We can easily remove this effect and get a zombie cat looking normal again in no time! Additionally, white pets are more susceptible to being “washed out” by bright sun or flash photography, and black pets often absorb too much light and lack detail for that reason, but we can adjust these things after the photograph is taken to try and achieve an optimal level of detail.

Don't forget to use toys, treats, and other objects to get a pet's attention and bring out his personality.