NEVER WORK WITH ANIMALS

It’s an old showbiz saying (apparently) that you should never work with children or animals. After filming my cat themed test ident for E4 Stings
- which can be seen... here - I started to consider how I could get the best results out of filming our pet cat ‘Butters’. I came across two very relevant web pages… here and… here, that talk about photographing and filming animals (in my case a pet cat)

The following is what I found significant to my production…

Photograph your pet in great light. In the case of animals, that's almost always natural light, which is to say, turn off your flash and go outside.
The light next to a large window or open door or late day sunlight makes all animals (and people) look great. It's all about the light. I repeat.

Get close to your pet whether it's a horse or a goldfish. Fill the frame with the animal you love and leave out all other distractions like furniture, telephones, and background objects.

Look for backgrounds that will contrast against your pet. In other words, if you have a black dog, look for a light background. If you have a white cat, look for a dark background.

Keep your camera at the animal's eye level. Avoid the view point from a human eye's, which is to say, looking down. Get down on your hands and knees.

You can take wonderful pictures without looking through the camera.
Try holding the camera 12 inches from your pets face without using the viewfinder. Of course, luck is required, but you will be surprised how often this turns out some good results.

When photographing a living creature, it's almost always best to focus on the eyes. Make the eyes sharp. It's where people look first.

Animals may need to be enticed to stand still long enough for you to push the shutter button or for you to record that shot. The easiest way to do this is to use the time-honoured tradition of treats.