Photographing Dogs on Rocks - The Up Ups Dog Photography Challenge

Dog Photography Tricks of the Trade

One of the trickiest tricks a pet photographer must have up her sleeve is how to keep dogs that don’t know “stay” to stay for a photo. While there are a few tricks I use during nearly every session, one of my favorites is an Up Ups.

Up Ups just means elevating the dog just a bit so taking a step requires more effort than just standing still. Dogs can go Up Ups on just about anything - a fallen tree, a log, a stump, a bench, a garden wall - or in the case of this image - up on rocks.

A Failed Attempt at a Dog In Landscape Photography

Photographing Hana the German Shepherd dog on rocks for Up Ups wasn’t my original plan. If you read the last post about Dogscapes - photographing dogs in landscapes - you know my original plan was to photograph Hana with the view off Preachers Rock at sunrise as the background. Alas, despite 4 AM alarms, 2.5 hour drives, and mountain hikes at sunrise - heavy cloud cover foiled our efforts, but I wasn’t going to let a few clouds keep us from creating a beautiful photograph.

Dogs on Rocks

I’ve been lucky enough to photograph Hana several times over the last few years, both at my Pet Portrait Events and both of her pet birthday sessions! Hana is a joy to photograph, equal parts stunning beauty and silly shepherd girl. For this session her mom brought along some steak to convince Hana that modeling was worth it. I really love Hana photographed up on the rocks with a slightly melancholy mood to fit the cloudy day.

Getting the Final Image

My biggest challenge with this image was keeping Hana from getting lost when photographing her on the rocks. With Hana perched on the rocks they are very close to being on the same focal plane - meaning the rocks would also be in focus creating a lot of very in focus texture close to my subject. 

With careful post processing work I decreased the sharpness of the rocks, enhanced the leading line to Hana and removed Hana's bright pink leash. I also created a vignette that brings extra light to Hana amking her face the star of the image. 

This image earned a Top 10 placement in Up Ups and our final feedback:  "There's a lovely subdued mood in this image, really elevated by the misty weather and the dog's calm and serene pose and expression."

While I typically make only simple edits to the final image - in this piece I wanted to make sure the texture of the rock, especially on the left, didn't pull focus from our pretty dog.

Using Photoshop I reduced the texture of the rock and simplified the left side of the image to make a stronger leading line coming up to Hana perched at the top of the rock.