How to Get Photos of Raw Food Ingredients with a Dog Model
Dogs love food. But what do you do if you want to get photos of food items WITH a dog? It can be done, but with this shoot, I wanted Bentley the model with a variety of ingredients that could be found in dog food. As much as I love photographing as realistic as possible, without Photoshop, I knew that Bentley would probably try to jump at the hanging pieces of meat!
The key is shooting for a composite. Well duh, if you’re familiar with creating advertisements. However, have you ever tried to combine photos of different items that were taken by two (or more) different photographers?
The resulting image you get is a composite that looks “off”…maybe one item has highlights on a different side, and in another item, the light is coming at a different intensity and direction.
You can avoid that by providing specific direction to each photographer. Tell that dog photographer you want the key light on whatever side of the dog’s face. Tell that product photographer that this product needs to have the light in that same direction. But you probably want to minimize headaches and the less moving parts to a shoot sometimes is better. So there’s another way…
Hire a Commercial Photographer Experienced with Pets and Food
One way to keep your shoot simple, and possibly to save time and money, is to find a commercial photographer to work with who can photograph all items and dogs needed for the job. So whether you have a saucy broth topping, a wholesome food ingredient, a shiny metal bowl, or an excited dog, you can be sure that each component will be photographed in the most consistent way possible. You’ll make your graphic designer happy by providing well-lit photos that look like they belong together.
Many dog photographers that do commercial work might have a talent at getting great expressions from dogs, but how do you know if they’re also the right fit to photograph certain items? Can they photograph shiny, metal objects, like a metal dog food bowl?
You could also hire some cheap white background mass-production Amazon product photographer, but if you’re particular with how you want the items to look, or if there’s raw food involved, you might just be better off having your commercial photographer to shoot those on set after photographing the dog.
Well you could have them photograph the stuff before doing the dogs, but dogs love to sniff around so it’s probably better just focus on the dog first, and then photograph the items.
Photographing Raw Food Ingredients
With the same lighting set up from the dog photos, I photographed the dog food bowl, but brought my strip box a bit lower to the ground. My tripod was at the same height with that shot. Then I photographed each raw food item, and here’s how I prepped each ingredient to be photographed:
- steak – brushed with oil to show some shine
- chicken – carefully selected chicken legs, rinsed, and minute parts trimmed with scissors
- yams – man, these can look so wonky. I selected the best ones that didn’t look shriveled up at the ends. Not too gnarly. smooth skins
- peas – a whole bag of peas. The pea pods had to be sliced open with an Exacto knife to show the peas inside.
- carrots – because it was a hot day, the carrots also had to sit in an ice water bath. The stems that were found bent out of shape were trimmed off with scissors
- apples – apples had to be shined. I also selected the apples with a nice blend of colors
- kale – some tiny leaves were trimmed off to make the stems look more even, and then wire was also stitched through the leaves to make them look more compact.
What you don’t realize about these fun photos is that I took these in an abandoned office space offered by my CT realtor friend Tina. The room was in poor shape and in the middle of renovations, but this was a portfolio photo shoot with my friend and her dog, so this worked! It also wasn’t the easiest task to find a local, indoor, private, dog-friendly location at the specific date I was looking for!
At the end of a shoot, if you know that your dog model had fun, the dog owner enjoyed their time working with their dog, and the photographer got the photos needed, that makes for a job well done!
Here is a photo of Bentley drooling over the last few treats as I’m asking, “do you like the cookies?”!
So if you’re ever in need of a commercial photographer who has confidence and skill in working with dogs, food, and all sorts of random things, feel free to reach out to me! I’m the type of photographer who likes challenges and working on unique projects.
I’ve photographed hundreds of dogs, people, and things. Stay tuned for more work that will be posted!
