This week I am being presented a challenge to take a self portrait and include a dog - well, Abby being my oldest model at five years of age is my first go to girl.  She has been modeling for me since I first saw her.  We do a lot of rescue dog photography and this is how we met Abby.  Now, don't get me wrong - when I first met her she wasn't a good model.  In fact, she was a challenging girl of about 6 months old and really had no idea what was being asked of her.  Eventually, we did manage to get some 'okay' photographs of her but nothing like what I get of her now after a few years of modeling school (ha ha).  

Selfie's are not my thing.

  While I will allow photographs to be taken of me - they are taken by others, not me.  I don't hold my phone out in front of me and take photos like so many do - and I see some wonderful selfies out there.  Hence the challenge....get a selfie with one of my dogs.

How to do this? Self Timer, Remote ?

There are many different ways that I could do this - the obvious one is to put my camera on a tripod, get Abby situated and in a 'stay' mode (hopefully she will stay), then set the self timer and hope that I can get into a good position next to Abby in front of the camera before the shutter clicks.  That's probably the most difficult way.  So, as I had a few days to work with before the photographs had to be taken I went to Amazon and got myself a little wireless remote - made sure it worked with my camera and now I am planning to try doing this challenge using the little wireless remote.  This is one of those times that one likes having Amazon prime ....and living on the west coast of Florida we have several distribution warehouses that are less than 1 hour from my house - it arrived the next day.

Time to try a selfie

I will say, this was a test of my ability to achieve this week's pet photography blog.  Abby and I went down to the local park (it's spring break here and there are more people than normal).  We finally found a place that didn't have a lot of people and I asked Abby to stay and she was very willing since I had goodies in my pocket.  Now to get this wireless remote to work (which I don't recommend this brand at this time).  I worked fine if it was behind the camera, but forget it if I was in front of the camera.

Great.

So now we are down to using the self timer on the camera - and well,  that's not exactly the fun thing to run at a dog to get into the photo and hope that she is still there - remember she is off leash.

I won't post those that show Abby trying to run away from me, me trying to get into some kind of position before the camera fired and all the other bloopers!

Selfie 1 - I feel like I am that family 'photo' at the beginning of Young Sheldon where the entire family is looking away from the approaching cow.

Selfie #2 - I guess this one is a little better but Abby is not paying any attention to the camera and is definitely not interested in looking at it since there is no one there making funny faces, sounds or potentially bribing her with food.

Selfie #3 - Abby showing her tender side - she is a gentle dog that is sensitive and really just wants to be loved back.  No loud noises, no loud yelling, just a simple life where everything is nice and easy going - that's her ideal world.  

So there you have it - I have done a few selfies with Abby - I need to work on this skill I can see.  And I need to find a better way to do this because this certainly wasn't ideal - and if none of that works, maybe I just need to get Jim in on it and have him take photographs of me with the girls.

That's it for this week's pet photography blog.  For more pet photographers sharing their take on this theme, head over to visit Elaine Tweedy of I Got the Shot Photography, staying true to photographing reality in Northeastern Pennsylvania and surrounding areas

If you would like to discuss or book a custom pet portrait session, send an email to [email protected] or give us a call/text Linda at 813-610-2671 in the Tampa Bay area (Hillsborough/Pinellas/Pasco/Polk counties in Florida).  We have flexible rates and packages to fit most everyone’s budget as we believe that having wonderful photographs of your pet is important to so many people.