Volunteer pet rescue/shelter photography series: Part 2- Doing an organized shoot

Shelter dog                                                              Photo: Gila Todd

To shoot rescue and shelter photography will require great patience, a little skill, and a decent grasp on organization.

If you are a big animal lover, have a few pets of your own, or have had a good deal of contact with animals in your life, the patience is a given.You already know that like children, pets are unpredictable and you will understand the challenge going into this situation.

The skill will come from showing your patience and persistance getting the job done, and done well.

Organization is something you start hours before your trip to the shelter, and is something like skill in that the more you do it, the better you get.

Just take a deep breath. Start your project off right, telling yourself before you ever open the door, "I am saving lives today," because you are. That alone is all the motivation you need.

Choose a contact person at the shelter who handles the animals on a regular basis. Go to that person as soon as you arrive at the shelter to find out which animals you will be working with and what you need to know about each one. Is this one active, scared, or overbearing? What was the animals background, if known. What special needs might each animal have. Start filling in your pet tracker as soon as you start getting information.

Decide in the beginning of your visit which breed you will be photographing first. Dogs, cats, or other. You won't want to mix them up as this can cause quite a bit of confusion for everyone involved, including the pets who will be stiffing you.

For instructions sake lets say you start with canines.

Shelter dog                                     Photo: Gila Todd

After you have a list of the animals you will be photographing and their information, have you assistant get them from the kennel and bring them to a place at the shelter where you will be photographing. Indoors or out, you should try to photograph where each pet will be away from the other animals, and a little less distracted.

Spend a few minutes, you and your assistant, with each animal so they can get a good whiff of you and get used to who you are. It doesn't take long. This is also a good opportunity to play some of the energy out of a couped up pooch so you can get those more quiet moments in your images.

After everyone is acquainted you can begin your photo session.

If you do not have an enclosure available to shoot in, have your assistant hold the lead of the animal over the animals head, standing with their body as far away from you subject as possible. This may seem a bit uncomfortable for your assistant but it will make it easier to edit said assistant out of the photo during processing of your images. Your assistant can use treats and toys to keep the dogs attention until you have the animal composed the way you like.

Shelter Dog                     Photo: Gila Todd

Once you think you have the animal where you want them, it's your job to get the animals attention on to you and your camera. This can be done by whistling, simply talking, or making funny noises. Squeaky toys and clickers work wonders for perking the ears of a shy dog. Nanette Martin, a popular pet photographer, makes noises that sound something like a dog whining or crying (or sometimes a rabbit in distress) that seems to do the trick getting the attention of her subjects. Call it dog speak if you like, but you can see her results in the wonderful, expression filled images that she captures.

If you have a frisky pup that just won't stand still for the most important portrait of their life, allow him or her to tromp about and play while you turn your camera to sports mode and overshoot the scene. Take a few dozen shots and review before turning the animal back to it's kennel, to make sure you captured at least 2 or 3 keepers.

After you have finished with each animal make sure to record the image numbers you have just taken on your pet tracker. It's good practice to write down both beginning and ending numbers. These will be essential in helping you (and others) identify each subject of the day. Make sure all identifying info is included on the pet tracker before returning the animal to it's kennel.

Shelter kitty in her cage.                                                                Photo: Gila Todd

Once you have finished with the dog session, move along to the kitties.

While kitties will normally all be in a single area,  their enclosure types may vary. Some cats are housed in a "cat room" or single room enclosure, while other shelters house cats in individual cages. Single room enclosures are ideal to shoot in because of the space available to you, but may prove a bit harder to keep track of a single animal with so many walking about. Cats in cages make things a bit more simple as they're are all in order and can be brought out of their cages one at a time. If you have a kitty who just refuses to remain still for their glamor shot, have your assistant hold the frisky feline over their shoulder, similar to an infant. Your assistant will no doubt be in the photo (their backs anyway) but a pose like this should not allow the assistants back to be so distracting that one doesn't notice the cat  immediately.

Uromastyx lizard being shy (shot through enclosure glass)   Photo: Gila Todd

For other breeds of animals that you may not be able to handle out of the cage or kennel make sure to use the manual focus on your camera so that you can focus past the lines of the fencing or divider of the kennel or cage. Auto focusing an animal in a cage will prove difficult as the camera eye will try to focus on the closest item in the photo. In most cases, the wire of the enclosure.

When might be best to photograph animals in their cages, pens, or enclosures?

Not everyone is mentally equipped to hold a snake or a lizard. So unless you are lucky enough to have an assistant who won't mind handling a reptile, be prepared to photograph not only through the glass of your lens but that of the reptiles enclosure.

Farm animals are another group of animals that will photograph well enough in their enclosures provided there is enough room for you to get around. Again, shoot manually through fences and kennels to avoid and auto focus on the items closest to you.

Fish, it goes without saying, should not be removed from their enclosure for photographing. Just make sure that the glass of the tank is clean, there is ample overhead light into the tank, and do not shoot with a flash. A flash will simply reflect from the glass and cause your photo to be nothing but a big burst of light. A tripod may be necessary to keep the blur out of your no flash shots.

At the end of your session, make copies of the pet tracker info you have kept along with the photo file names, and leave them with the shelter. If you are not the person loading these images online to places like Pet Finder, these records will be necessary for the person who does upload them.

Some volunteers will simply upload the images they have taken onto a shelter computer allowing someone else to edit and upload the images. Others may want to take them back to have a look at them on their PC and only relinquish the best images to the shelter. And some photographers will go the extra mile and edit all the photographs, making them look their best, before cutting lose with final copies.

If you are a photographer who takes the images home to edit and finalize, you can email the photographs back to the shelter manager, or the person in charge of uploading them, named by the kennel or cage number for each pet. Another option would be to place all the photos on a disc and return it to the shelter when you have had a chance to copy your best work to the disc.

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