Gus and Buddy

I am building my books on pet portraits. What I am trying to achieve is a clean studio look. My goal is to capture these pets as if they are fashion models.

I may end up shooting some outdoor shots in the future, but right now I'd like to focus my efforts into studio type portraits...pets only though. I am still a big fan of on location shoots for humans.

So using my newly assembled studio, my first shoot was of Buddy the mini schnauzer and Gus the english bulldog. I am told the coloured set shows better.

It was a challenge, but both dogs were relatively cooperative. I won't be shooting two dogs together next time though. I also found out that a white backdrop is a disposable item when doing pets.

I will need to figure out if I can set up my studio indoors in a smaller space now that winter is closing in quick. Perhaps I should practice setting up on location to the owners house next time.

These are the two that I enlarged to 12x18 prints. They turned out nicely for what they cost.

my ghetto studio

Just got a few rolls of backdrop today to complete my recently bought backdrop system.

I got the backdrops used at $40 for 2 rolls of 6' wide and 2 rolls of 4' wide. They're still in decent shape and after only cutting off about the first couple feet, it was pretty fresh. Was going only buy the 2 rolls of 6' because honestly 4' is quite narrow. If you want to get some decent distance between the subject and the background (like where I've placed the monopod), you can only do portrait shots and you'll start seeing the edges when you shoot landscape. But the nice gentleman just wanted to get rid of all of them and offered to sell the me the two 4' for 5 bucks each. At that price, who cares.

I have two sb800s nuking the background and then a sb900 on the umbrella for the key light. The corrugated board I used as a sign for my garage sale last week is used here as a ghetto reflector. I didn't flag the two background lights because I wanted an even fade on the floor portion of the backdrop. The light leak also gave a subtle nice rim light on the subject.

I'm trying to build my books on some pet portraits. This will be a good start to what's to come....but also I can foresee some serious spending when I decide to go full studio strobes.