In this video, photographer Julie Johnson offers some helpful tips and tricks for photographing pets. For example: to get your dog’s attention and its ears to perk up, ask it some questions.

(via Fstoppers)

Real estate agents make it a point to have homes look attractive in photographs, knowing that good photography can make a huge difference, but the people at animal rescue shelters often settle for second-rate photographs of the dogs they’re trying to find homes for. Professional pet photographer Teresa Berg of Dallas, Texas realized that countless dogs are likely euthanized each year simply due to bad photography, and decided to make a difference. Several years ago she started doing shoots for a pet shelter free of charge, and helped increase the adoption rates there by 100%
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Last year we featured the work of Matthew and William Burrard-Lucas, two brothers who mounted their Canon DSLR to a remote-controlled car to shoot close-up photographs of dangerous African animals. The behind-the-scenes video above was just published yesterday, and shows the RC DSLR being driven up to different animals, all of which are clearly thinking, “what the heck is this thing”? They should offer these “BeetleCams” for sale. I want one.

Wanna know how to capture a wide-eyed and wide-mouthed photo of your dog? It’s easy! First, set up your camera on a tripod and point it at your dog. Then, simply throw it some tasty treats with one hand while snapping photographs with the other. There are all kind of expressions you might capture using this technique, but this one by Andrea Sillem is pretty priceless.

Also, be sure to check out Carli Davidson’s photos of dog’s shaking off water if you haven’t already.

(via Reddit)

Image credit: Photograph by Andrea Sillem and used with permission

While we’re on the topic of high-speed cameras (and slow motion videos), here’s a beautiful slow-motion video of an eagle owl “attacking” a camera, shot at 1,000fps with a Photron FASTCAM SA2. The new Phantom v1610 camera announced today can record footage 1000 times slower than this.

(via kottke.org)

For her series “Shake“, pet photographer Carli Davidson photographed curious portraits of dogs shaking off water. Use a fast shutter speed and you can capture all kinds of strange expressions on your dog’s face.
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How do you get a silverback gorilla to put a GoPro HD camera up to its face? Stuff the case full of raisins, of course!

This cheeky ape turned photographer for a day after being handed a high-definition camera by his keepers. Silverback gorilla Ya Kwanza, 27, happily snapped away at himself and his surroundings in his compound in Durrell Wildlife Park in Jersey. The gorilla even took a number of close-up shots before returning the camera to his keepers by throwing it over the wall of his enclosure. Staff at the park also captured the gorilla photographing himself with the indestructible camera, which was covered in honey and oats. [#]

Lesson learned: if you ever lose your camera to a silverback gorilla, ask nicely and they’ll throw it back.

(via Fstoppers)

Thanks for the tip, Joe!

Did you know that flatbed scanners make fun portrait cameras as well? Just place your cat on the glass, do a quick scan, and you’ll have a strange looking portrait shot from below! Apparently this is pretty popular among cat lovers — a Flickr search for “cat scanner” returns thousands of results! This gives “cat scan” a whole new meaning!

“Cat Scanner” (via Photojojo)

Image credit: Cat Scan! by Tabbymom Jen

We’ve featured this creative style of photography before where the subjects were neighborhood children and a baby, but what about dreaming up scenes with a cat and a dog on the ground instead of a person? That’s exactly what Theresa Knudson did with her cat Fluffy, arranging paper props in the scene and using the ground as the backdrop.
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Photographer Martin Usborne shot a series of photographs of dogs patiently waiting in cars for their owners for his project “MUTE: the silence of dogs in cars“. He managed to capture their longing expressions quite well.
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