Frisco The Pug (Click to enlarge)
We’ve discussed depth of field (DOF) before, but it’s part of the Photographic Triangle, which is imperative to understand if you want to improve your pet photography. The depth of field is controlled by adjusting the aperture. My shooting plan included a shot of a…shall we say…robust Frisco, in as flattering a pose as is possible. I didn’t care a lick about shutter speed because I knew we could anchor him easily. See Anchoring My Buddy for more about this technique. It’s not like Frisco was a jumpy puppy or anything.
This is an example of using aperture settings as a tool to give focus to an area of your image as a place for your eye to rest before drifting to the rest of the image. Of course I always want the eyes to be in focus but the client wanted a shot of the whole dog, so I used an aperture setting of f2.8, which resulted in a sliver of DOF on his eyes and his pushed in nose.
I could have shot with an Aperture Priority setting, which would have let the camera pick the shutter speed, but I chose a manual setting of 1/500, f2.8, ISO 100. As you can see, Frisco’s sweet face is accentuated.
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