Professional wildlife photographer Laura Galbraith goes domestic to offer some expert tips on capturing engaging pet portraits
PRO LAURA GALBRAITH
CAMERA: CANON EOS R5 & R6 photography.co.uk Laura was an IT and maths teacher, but seven years ago she decided to pursue her passion and become a full-time photographer. She now runs a successful pet photography and workshop business, and she’s enjoyed critical success too, winning the Guild of Photographers Bird Image of the Year title in 2019 and Nature and Wildlife Image of the Year in 2020. We took Helen along to meet her at her home studio near Cambridge, UK.
HELEN BLACK
CAMERA: CANON EOS R6 Helen is a former IT trainer for a recruitment agency. She’s always had a strong interest in photography, and when she was made redundant 10 years ago she found she had more time to devote to her hobby. She developed a love for wildlife photography during the pandemic, using a pop-up hide in her garden to take photos of birds and other garden visitors. While she’s confident photographing wildlife outdoors, she admits that she finds working in a studio and using flash daunting, so we paired her with Laura for a crash course in pet portraiture.
TECHNIQUE ASSESSMENT
The Animal Eye autofocus tracking takes care of capturing pin-sharp pet shots
To get started Laura asked Helen to put her Canon EOS R6 into its Manual mode, and opened the aperture on her 100-400mm lens to its widest f/5.6 at 400mm for a shallow depth of field to create separation between their first subject, Leonardo, and the background, so that he was the clear focal point. Laura set a shutter speed of 1/400 sec to freeze the dog and eliminate camera-shake. The low light levels needed a whopping ISO of 10,000!
Laura shoots with Canon EOS R5 and R6 full-frame bodie,s and both feature Canon’s incredible Animal Eye autofocus. Helen used the Animal Eye AF on her R6 to quickly lock onto pets’ eyes make sure they were pin-sharp – it also came in handy when shooting the high-speed action shots. Helen also set up double back-button focus on her R6 so that AF-ON engages autofocus, while the * button activates Animal Eye AF.
EXPERT INSIGHT
A fun technique to try is to throw some treats up in the air towards your cat or dog, and use flash to freeze the moment they attempt to catch them – you can capture some wonderfully funny and comical poses. The conventional maximum sync speed of flash around 1/250 sec will likely be too slow to freeze the animals leaping up to catch their treats, so flashes and triggers with High-Speed Sync (HSS) are a must.
PRO TIP
The aperture is a series of blades that open up or close down to control the flow of light to the camera sensor. A great way to bring attention to your pets when shooting outdoors is to blur the background
