Photographing Young Puppies
I got given the opportunity to visit the Benoveor Kennel this month to photograph their new litter of puppies who where only 3 weeks old. This shoot was conducted as part of my new project looking at the breed, Welsh Springer Spaniel. I wanted to show the breed at a young age and plan to go back just before the puppies leave to their new homes.
While on the shoot I got asked if I could try and get some christmasy photographs of the puppies. so we set up some wrapping paper as a background and filled a basket with tinsel. The the challenge began, we started with one puppy at a time which worked out very well. However we then tried adding more puppies and even had three in at one time, but didn't get any good photos of more than one pup as they would not sit still all at the same time. I also found that the flash reacted with the background and became distracting in some of the photographs.
Once we finished the Christmas photographs I moved onto photographing the puppies in their pen. I found that this was slightly easier as I just moved with the puppies, rather than trying to get them to stay in one place. I ended up with loads of photographs ranging from shots of them sleeping to the puppies playing with their toys.
My advise is if you end up photographing puppies at any point be prepared to move around a lot following them and also don't expect them to sit or stand in one play for more than five seconds. Also do not take any external flashes with you, as that might upset the puppies, so just stick to the built in flash of your camera.
