Last weekend we ran our mini pet portraits sessions as part of Street Paws at a classic Newcastle pub, the Lass O’Gowrie, it’s great to see an increasing number of places that are dog friendly. It’s even better when you the place is full of such cute furry faces that just love that they get to be part of it all instead of staying at home.
As with the other sessions that were held in a pub this was an on location shoot. One of the great things about shooting on location when you enter a place for the first time, a place you have never seen before, is the challenge of coming up with something on the spot. Although sometimes it’s nice to walk into a shoot knowing what you're walking into so you can concentrate on other things, it’s still a lot of fun to go in without knowing what you’re going to walk away with. Keeping your eyes open for simple ways to add some interest, like the green chair in these photos, it was a simple way to lift the dogs up closer to the great mural behind them and not have to worry about the chair being seen.
The trick to getting great results in any location is light. Light can have such a transformational effect that you sometimes cannot recognise the place you were shooting. It’s perhaps the most powerful creative tool a photographer has and it takes a lot of time and patience to learn how to make use of it, especially when you are working with dogs in noisy environments. The effort doesn’t stop there, you have to carry and set up the gear before you can even start shooting, and when the shoot is done you have to pack it all up again. But boy is it worth it!
