Pro edition
Session Kit.
The demo publishes what can and cannot be asked of an animal. This is the kit that makes the short list happen — the sounds, the order to spend them in, and the two sessions that need their own method.
Sounds, and what each buys
| Sound | What it gets | When to spend it |
|---|---|---|
| A squeaker, once | Ears hard forward, eyes to the source | Late. It is the strongest thing in the bag and it works once. |
| A kissy noise | A soft look, sometimes a head tilt | Early and often. It is the cheapest and the least startling. |
| A whistle, quiet | A head tilt from most dogs | Middle. Reliable twice, rarely three times. |
| Crinkling a wrapper | Full attention from food-motivated dogs | Late, and never near a resource-guarding dog. |
| Their own name | A look, then a look away | Almost never. It is the owner's word and burning it in a studio is rude. |
| Silence | A settled, calm frame | The last fifteen minutes. Most people never try it. |
- Nothing at all for the first fifteen minutes. Let the room become boring.
- Cheapest sounds first — kissy noises, soft talking. These recharge; the others do not.
- One new sound at a time, and only when the light and the frame are already right.
- Never repeat a sound that just produced a good frame. You have the frame.
- Squeaker last, if at all. Once it is spent the session is effectively over for alert frames.
Home visits
- One room, chosen in advance
- Whichever gets the most daylight before noon. Wandering the house loses twenty minutes.
- A window, and no other light
- Household lamps mix colour temperatures and turn a dog green. We turn them off.
- Floors that are not slippery
- A dog sliding on laminate will not settle. A rug solves it.
- Other animals elsewhere
- Unless they are in the pictures. An audience changes the behaviour of everyone.
- Their own bed or blanket
- A familiar surface is worth more than any prop and photographs better than a studio one.
- Nobody new in the room
- Two people maximum, both known to the animal. I am already the stranger.
Running a senior session
| When | Do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Before | Ask what they can still do | Stairs, standing, jumping onto furniture. Plan the session around what is comfortable rather than discovering it. |
| Arrival | Sit on the floor, no camera, ten minutes | An old dog will not adjust to a stranger quickly, and there is no version of this worth rushing. |
| First | Photograph them where they already are | Do not move an old dog for a better background. Move the background. |
| Middle | Hands, feet, grey muzzles, the collar | The details are the pictures families come back to. Ask for the hand on the head; most people are too polite to. |
| If tired | Stop | There is no frame worth the last twenty minutes of a tired old dog. We will come back if it matters. |
| After | Deliver in three days | Families booking these are often working to a horizon. Three weeks is the wrong answer. |
Lighting a black coat
- Light the background separately from the animal. One source cannot do both.
- Rim from behind at 45 degrees. It is what draws an edge out of a dark ground.
- Expose for the eye, not for the coat. The eye is the only thing that must be right.
- A background one to two stops away from the coat — lighter or darker, never equal.
- Accept that some detail is gone. A black dog rendered as shape and eye is a portrait, not a failure.
Working practice, not veterinary advice. If an animal is unwell, the session waits.