Soft Light and Tight Cropping Make Pet Pictures Perfect!


I can't say enough how important good soft light is to anyone's portrait - including your pet's. The next time you make a portrait find the room with the most indirect light, turn off your flash and crop in tight.


This is my Mom's cat Leo. She wanted a portrait of him but I didn't want to lose the color of those deep blue eyes to redeye or to darkness so I faced his body toward a large north facing window and hung out while he got comfortable.





Below is the exact same image as above except it is cropped in a little tighter. See how much more intense his eyes appear. In the previous picture you say to yourself "That's a pretty cat." With a tighter crop you have a stronger sense of his personality.





And just to bring the point home here is the exact same image as the previous two, cropped only tighter so as just to include his head. You get a much stronger sense of his state of mind and you can't take your eyes off those baby blues.





My favorite way to use a close-cropped image is to blow it up and make it into a canvas or display like this one. If your image is right on focus, sharp and steady, you can easily blow up a remarkable image from 4 to 6 times before pixelation begins to appear.





Here is another nice shot showing Leo's whole body as he is relaxing on the carpet. It's nice but not too special.





If we crop in for a close-up we really start to focus in on his personality and get a sense of how soft his paws and muzzle are.





With the tighter crop we also begin to get a sense of movement from the to diagonals in the cropped image; one leading out the bottom right from his outstreached legs and one leading out the upper right corner from the implied line of his wiskertips to his left eye to his right ear. Images with stronger geometric compositions are great to use on cards. Here is this image on a watercolor card.





Now not all portraiture work has to be about great poses. Sometimes when you watch pets sleep or stretch they take on the cutest little poses. Capture 3 or 4 of your favorites from a similar vantage point and framing then lay them out in a series to make a storyboard. "click"

"click"



"click"



"click"




Then put them all together to remind you of how cute they are.






Have a great time making your own pet portraits and remember - Turn off your flash, find a big indirect window and crop closely!


Enjoy!

Check out our website at lunasara.com





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