Pet Photographer Captures Expressive Dogs and One Guilty-Looking Cat
A pet photographer has created a hilarious and adorable series of mostly dog portraits pulling funny faces which she calls Who Cut The Cheese?
Belinda Richards tells PetaPixel that the 20-strong photo series started with only non-canine in the set — Yuki the cat.
“With this particular project I came across this cat — Yuki — who I had photographed as a normal client,” Richards explains.
“I had taken this image of Yuki that made me ‘spit my drink out’ laughing and I knew one day I would have to do something with this particular image and popped it in my inspiration folder.”
A year later, Richards was applying for a fellowship with the Societies of Photographers and needed to present a set of photos to a panel in London.
“I was going through my inspiration folder and came across the image of Yuki again and decided that he looked very guilty,” she says.
“My husband came in and said he looks like he just passed gas and was blaming it on the dog and that is how this series came to life.”
Who Cut the Cheese?
The entertaining project worked out well because Richards received her fellowship which she says was carefully curated by adding a homogenized background into each shot.
“I created the background by photographing scrunched-up pieces of aluminum foil and overlaying them in Photoshop with different blending modes,” she says.
“I have received a great reaction to these images. People love the humour. I think anything with animals being funny is always going to have a good reaction. Anyone who has a dog or cat in their home can connect with the silliness that they bring to our lives.”
Capturing Pet Portraits
All of the photos were captured in Richards’s Frog Dog Studios in Melbourne, Australia where she uses a Sony a7r V and a Sigma Art 35mm f/1.2 prime lens as well as a set of Profoto D2s.
After capturing the photos she will use dodging and burning to enhance the dog’s expressions.
“When editing my pet portraits I usually do my cropping in post as it can be hard to get it exactly right in camera with a moving target,” she says.
“So usually I start with that. I use the Adobe suite and do my cropping in Camera RAW as well as all of my global adjustments. I will then open each image in Photoshop and remove anything that shouldn’t be there like stray hairs, slobber, and dandruff.”
More of Richards’s work can be found on her website, Facebook, and Instagram.
Image credits: All photos by Belinda Richards/Frog Dog Studios.
