How To Start A Pet Photography Business!

How To Start A Pet Photography Business Using

Digital Props and Backgrounds

Using Digital Props and Backgrounds in all types of photography is becoming very popular in many markets, including pet photography. You can make it look like you own a huge studio, except you don't have to spend thousands on equipment!

This is all you need to get very professional results with every photo you shoot!

1. A white seamless background - You'll be able to find either white vinyl or paper in 60" widths at a craft store or online pretty cheap. Try going with 5 ft wide and around 10 ft long.

2. You'll also need an external flash or a soft box - If you are using an external flash, it will just attach to your hot shoe on your camera and light can be bounced off the ceiling or a wall. You can also use a soft box which will give you soft light and help eliminate shadows.

Lighting is the key to getting a clean line all around your subject when selecting and cutting out in Photoshop. You'll want to position your soft box to the right of your camera and have it facing your subject at a 45 degree angle.

This is the same setup nearly every professional studio used for portraits.

3. Reflector - You can either use a peice of white poster board or purchase a reflector which you will use on the opposite side of your soft box or flash. The reflector helps fill in the shadows on the opposite side of your subject.

4. Distance from the Background - It's always suggested that you have your subject as far away from the background as possible! At a minimum it should be 4 to 6 feet.

The result will be shallow depth of field and there will be no shadows cast on the background.

5. Photoshop - Any version of Photoshop will work with digital backgrounds, even Photoshop Elements.

There are various ways to extract your subject using Photoshop, the easiest being to use the Magic Wand tool.

Select the magic wand tool, and set your tolerance to 50.

Click somewhere in the white background. Photoshop will then find lines and make your selection.

You can play with tolerance until you get the selection you want. Once you are seeing the marching ants, click "Select" and choose "Feather" and set to 1 or 2 pixels.

This softens the edge, making everything look more realistic.

6. Digital Backgrounds And Props - Open which background or prop you want to use. Click on your subject and drag it into your background.

Position it so it looks right and then click "Layer - Flatten Image"

Save your new image as a new file, and be careful not to overwrite your original.

After you've done this several times, you will get better and better and it will just take a few minutes to create a digital image.

This is all you need to start a pet photography business. Although there are things to learn about how to work with pets, how to get them to look at the camera if that is the look you're going for, etc, this is the basic equipment you need to get started. You just need to practice!

Soon, your portraits will resemble those taken in a full size studio and you'll be charging studio prices for your work!

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