Photographing Dogs on Rocks - The Up Ups Dog Photography Challenge
One of the questions I hear most from clients before a session:
My dog doesn't really have a "stay." Is that going to be a problem?
No. And here's one of the reasons why.
The Up Ups Trick
"Up Ups" is simple: I ask the dog to step up onto something slightly elevated — a fallen log, a garden wall, a stump, a boulder — and that elevation does a lot of the staying work for me.
When a dog is perched on something even a few inches off the ground, taking a step requires real effort. They feel the edge. They naturally slow down and balance. That moment of stillness is exactly what I need.
Dogs can go Up Ups on almost anything. Benches. Tree roots. Decorative brick. Stone walls.
And rocks.
The Session That Almost Wasn't
Hana the German Shepherd was one of my Emerge challenge models, and photographing her on rocks wasn't my original plan.
My original plan was Preachers Rock at sunrise — a stunning overlook in the North Georgia mountains near Dahlonega with a wide-open view I'd been wanting to use as a dog-in-landscape background.
So we set 4 AM alarms. Drove two and a half hours. Hiked up as the sky started to lighten.
Complete cloud cover. No sun, no view, no shot.
I had two choices: pack up and go home, or make something else.
Dogs on Rocks
I've photographed Hana a few times over the years — at Pet Portrait Events and for her birthday sessions. She's one of those dogs who photographs beautifully even when the light refuses to cooperate. Equal parts stunning and silly shepherd girl. Her mom brought steak, which helped with the modeling.
With the drama of the sunrise gone, we had a quiet, overcast morning and a rocky hillside. I put Hana up on the rocks and started working.
Getting the Final Image
The challenge was keeping Hana from disappearing into the texture.
When a dog is posed on rocks and both subject and surface land on the same focal plane, all that texture in the foreground competes with the dog. The image gets busy in a way that fights the eye rather than leading it.
In post production I reduced the sharpness of the foreground rocks, enhanced the leading line up to where Hana was perched, removed her bright pink leash, and added a vignette to bring extra light to her face.
The goal was always for the rocks to be context, not competition.
This image earned a Top 10 placement in the Up Ups challenge.
The 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."
That's what the cloud cover gave us. What looked like a failure at 6 AM turned into the specific mood the image needed.
Bonus: Shark on Rocks
Hana wasn't my only attempt at dogs on rocks during the 2022 Unleashed challenges.
I also photographed Shark the Staffordshire Terrier up on rocks in Suwanee, Georgia. I ultimately submitted his image for a different challenge — Soul Searcher — but I love how she looks perched up there: compact, confident, completely at home.
Dogs on dogs on rocks might be my new favorite combination.
The Takeaway
If your dog isn't great at staying, that's okay.
I have a whole toolkit of ways to work with dogs at every skill level — including dogs who are reactive, nervous, easily distracted, or just convinced that staying in one place is categorically unreasonable.
The Up Ups is one of my favorites because it works naturally, without asking the dog to do anything that doesn't make sense to them. They're not performing. They're just standing on a rock.
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