Photographing a Dog in Your Garden
When photographing any dog you need to find the right location, sometimes this can be you own garden. You need to find the best background, be it colourful or plain simple. I find that a wall or fence can be the best. Whenever I use my garden I get the dogs to sit or stand on the table as the background is perfect. It is a wall plastered by green leaves.
You also need think of how to get the dog to look at the camera or off in a different direction. I am lucky as my dog hate our next door neighbours cat, so if I need them to look in another direction IO call her name and point to where I want them to look and this does the trick. I can also be seen to be making weird noises to get the dogs to look at me. However you may find that different methods might work better for you, could be treats or throwing toys. Going back to the background, you need to chose a colour that makes the dog stand out. I find that green works very well when photographing Welsh Springer Spaniels, but if for example you were photographing a Black Labrador, you would want to find a light colour maybe look for bright red or yellow flowers as they would make the dog stand out.
So always remember when photographing any dog within your or others gardens to look at the background first. Make sure it helps the dog to stand out and is not too busy so your focus is on the dog not its surrounding. If you find the background is slightly too bright when looking back at you photographs, just reduce the saturation in photoshop.
