1st Pet Portraits

This is a branch of photography i have never dabbled in, Portraits, but something i have wanted to try. I decided when i bought my other bit of kit the other week to also buy a lighting set and Muslin backdrops as well and today really has been the 1st time i have managed to set it all up. Not that i was very well organized nor did i really know what i was doing. You can read all the guides out there but when it comes down to do the portraits its a whole new ball game. Getting the lighting right was my biggest issue, next getting the pups to sit still, well, getting Rocco to sit still for longer than a few seconds, very hard indeed, Keisha thankfully did sit in the same spot for several minutes
One thing i will definitely need to do before i do any photography is iron the muslins, so please ignore the creases in the images. These Muslins are very big, 10 feet by 20feet, apparently they take at least 45 minutes to iron

Anyway, i picked out 2 images that my wife liked, i was not that happy with them but they were better than some of the photos taken.

I do realize images are not that good at all but C&C welcome, if not some guidance thrown in

In my defense, young pups are not the easiest to work with....

A bit of of blown whites on Keisha...Rocco is being a comic but only serves to point up the difference, Keisha is blown in both.

Did you us a light set up?

I use pesrspex backgrounds bcause I hate ironing. xxx

Thanks Vikki.....
She is so hard to photograph with having white fur in the 1st place, lighting kit was used but only had two of the lamps set up. I need the output on the lamp i used as the flash at the right setting, too high and she is very blown out, too low and image was too dark.
It might be easier for me to find some objects that are bright white 1st, at least they will not run off every other minute

Re edit on Keisha. Still blown out around the right side of her neck but not so much on the body now. Cannot do much with the B&W image, her coat just starts to look grey

Wow what a stunning model you have there Mark, I can relate to your subject being very uncooperative, our cats are the same

If you can get a bit more distance between Keisha and your back drop, you could soften your BG so the creases don't show.

But I love Keisha expression.

Thanks Ken....She does love her photo being taken, well more than Rocco does. Its all about keeping them occupied long enough as all dogs have a short attention span..... It has to be worse trying to photograph some cats, you cannot command them as well as dogs, cats will just do their own thing although an object on a piece of string helps
I did trawl through some web pages last night for tips about lighting when it comes to pet photography, and it was mentioned about distance between subject and backdrop to give the image a sense of depth. And one other thing mentioned over and over, a 3rd lamp being used There are a few ways they can be set up, it is just finding the right one

That's part of the fun, playing around with the lights until you find what you had pictured in your mind.

I have a photographer friend who does dogs and sports photography, he gave me a great tip, that was to use a (clean ) squeaky toy in your mouth will taking there photograph. You should get some good expressions

Only problem with Rocco is once he hears squeaky toys he soon dives on top of you. I`ll get there with him, may just take a little longer

Can I be there to photograph that

Can't give you any tips as I've not done this. B&W one looks good with one looking at you and the other wondering what that is over there

Thanks Dave...
Still need a lot of practice though