Photographing Dogs that can JUMP! — BARKography

Photographing dogs that can jump is a blast.

I love action photography and as a photographer I always want to improve my skills so in January, I signed up for a 6 month challenge through Unleashed Education called Emerge. Unleashed Education is a resource for pet photographers who want to increase their knowledge, skills and techniques. The group is run by Charlotte Reeves and Craig Turner-Bullock who are both amazing and their hands on approach to running the challenges has been a great learning experience.

Emerge runs for 6 months and every 2 weeks we are given a new challenge. One of them was called Pantastic. Here is the challenge brief from the Unleashed Education website:

Create an action shot where the dog is running across in front of the camera from side to side. The image may be completely sharp, but ideally it should be a mixture of areas captured sharply and areas of motion blur. There does need to be at least some areas of sharpness in the image though, preferably the head. The image may not be completely blurry.

I knew what dog I wanted to use as my model as soon as I saw this challenge. His name is Ace. He is a golden retriever and he is beyond awesome. You’ve seen him here before. His mom and I have become friends over the years because of our mutual love of dogs and photography. Oh, AND she’s a dog trainer so he is beautifully trained and can 100% be trusted off leash.

I knew I wanted him to be my model because he jumps when he runs and my goal was to capture a panning photo of him with all 4 of his paws off the ground.

Since I know there are other dog photographers reading this blog post, I’m going to include some of my camera specs and get a bit technical.

I was photographing Ace using my Nikon d500. I love this camera. It shoots 10 frames / second which at the time when I got this camera was a huge step up from my Nikon d750. A huge downside to the d500 though is it is a crop sensor (20.9MP.) Since my main camera that I use now is the Nikon d850, I am used to the huge file sizes it creates (45.7MP) and I love that I can crop my photos at will and not lose any quality. However the d850 only takes 7 frames / second and that’s a big drop off from the d500.

So using a crop sensor camera was a challenge as was the location we used.

Many of you know who follow me, I am not a fan of all of the trees around where I live. I yearn for wide open spaces. I yearned for that wide open space after I saw these photos too because all of the brush and weeds in this area where a huge challenge.

Here are 3 reasons why taking panning photos of dogs is hard and the photos below prove my point:

1. Trying to track the dog with the camera and keep his entire body in the frame sometimes feels impossible (even with a really well trained dog)(especially with a crop frame camera.)

2. Trying to keep the focus point on the dog’s head while he’s running at full speed so that his head is sharp and in focus happened less frequently than I’d hoped.

3. Trying to make certain the dog wasn’t behind all of the brush in the area was a big challenge. And in the first photo below, if I’d used this photo I would’ve had to edit out all of the twigs underneath and above Ace.

The Blooper Reel: