Jim Larson Photography

I’ve missed a few opportunities to show off our little white dog, but couldn’t pass up this shot from her 2010 calendar.  Yes, we truly print out calendars every year of various photos taken of her.

This was a very simple setup from a technical point of view.  Alle was sitting on a black piece of plexiglass to give a nice reflection.  The background was black seamless paper and the lighting was a single 2×3 foot softbox.

When shooting pets, or any living subject for that matter, a good starting angle is to get at their eye level and experiment from there.  Make the subject look larger by shooting up at them, or smaller by shooting down.  I was pretty much at eye level with Alle.

We were invited over to a friend’s house the other day so that we could see their new puppies.  There were about half a dozen of them and they crawled all over each other.  Where do that get all that energy?  It wasn’t too long after their play time that they started to settle down which gave me some time to photograph a non-moving subject.  Here is a straight on shot of one of the little guys.

I’m very surprised that we didn’t take one home with us.

See all the photos at the following link:

More Puppy Photos

Here is photo of our dog, Alle who is always a welcome gift under the tree.

Alle’s August 2009 calendar shot.  She loves to go sailing!

Here is yet another shot I took at the marathon.  Between participants in the race there would be an occasional solo runner just out for some morning exercise.  I think this dog was having as great a time running with its master.

Here is our little friend napping with some of her toys.

Here is Alle resting on the shoulder of her favorite person and master.

Who doesn’t love a puppy?  This young Australian Shepherd  was an interesting subject. Unlike most puppies, he was quite mellow, so that was helpful in the studio.  However, unlike most subjects, he didn’t understand commands like “sit,” “stay,” “speak,” but he did pretty good.  Koda is one of the most handsome dogs I have ever seen.  His markings are amazingly beautiful.

My wife was making some interesting sounds to get Koda’s attention.  Unfortunately, when she started to howl, the poor puppy thought it was one of his counterparts from the wild, so he tucked his tail and ran.  However, he did respond with some adorable head tilts when she started to whimper.

Prior to the shoot, I headed over to Home Depot and picked up some “white tile board” for use under the subject.  This worked great with the white backdrop.

Thanks to Kenzie and her mom for bringing Koda over for the photo session.

You can almost imagine Alle asking, “Would you be my valentine?”

Hey, I guess I better start sharing photos of Alle from her 2009 calendar.

Here is Alle getting a taste of the snow.

Enjoy!