Photographing Dog Beds for all kinds of dogs.

As part of the job of serving up the display of dog beds on line, it is obviously important to make images that show the products exactly as they are. This is definitely not easy. At a primitive level, one simply takes the product outside when the sun shines, takes a photo and post it on line. That is obviously not the way to do it. It makes things look like ebay products. So then, as I learned, one starts to realise that whilst the natural day light is the best, it is almost impossible to get right, because direct sun is simply too much and a glare ruins the images. Dispersed light is better so that an even distribution of light over the object is achieved. Well, how often do you get that Goldie Lock situation of not too much and not too little sun? Especially in Scotland, where you know the saying goes: “If you don’t like the weather, it’s ok, because it will be different in 20 minutes”. So you can be out there with one of the luxury dog beds, ready to shoot the picture and then  the clouds suddenly drift across and the sun comes out in full blast. Or, frankly, you are JUST ready to take the photo and you feel the first speckles of rain on your head. Hahaha.

So I decided that a studio inside would be better because that way it would be a permanent fixture and I could then take pictures of the dog beds whenever I want, no matter how the weather was. Then the question is of course what to get etc, but I got my head round that and a separate room in the organisation is now dedicated as photography studio. It is almost to the extreme because there are big, fat blinds up to exclude any of the natural light.

So far, so good and all would be incredibly straight forward if it wasn’t for the users……  You can’t take photos of dog beds without demonstrating the users of these, so we need some dogs to lie on them.  The Tuffies pointer dogs are so well trained in modelling that it is a simple job to invite them in to the studio, show them the bed and they just go on and put their heads down. All the lamps also make the room a little bit hot, so the models almost go sleepy straight away and fall asleep.

But we really can’t rely on the pointers all the time and it would be nice to have other types of dog breeds to show how the durable dog beds work. So then trouble starts!!! Last night I had three spaniels to come and visit for modelling work. We all know how spaniels are all over the place and although these were EXTREMELY well behaved, the go-go-go in them meant that they were difficult to settle. Certainly no chance of sleeping at all, but they would sit and even lie down and look happy. With a SHARP eye on their owner the were staying still, but as soon as it all got too much, they started to pant and yawn in stress.

In the end we got the images of the dog beds sorted, but it remains to be seen how natural the situation looks. All will be revealed in a couple of weeks when we hope to have the enlargement facility up on line.