Brilliant! Easy to read, richly laid out, informative, productive, and hey, I took an idea out with my camera and got a stunning photo!
The library shelf is slowly expanding to accommodate a good selection of titles dedicated to dog photography. There are some titles I have already reviewed, but generally I would still recommend as number one pick the out of print Sally Anne Thompson’s Photographing Dogs (1989), now I can recommend a more recent title as a ‘must have’ although again the book pre-dates the magnificent 8 plus megapixel digital SLRs from the best of camera manufacturers.
Allan covers domestic and wild canines, so you can easily consider dogs in sports too. He starts with how to understand your dog’s mood, the limitations of a session, learning about your equipment, even how to improve your learning. He gives you material on the various aspects of breeds, how to attract the dog’s attention, get the ears up, or down. And into the more technical side he discusses the pros and cons of slide versus print film, shutter speeds for stopping motion, panning, and lighting techniques to get the coat texture captured in the print.
He finishes up with a couple of great lists to remind you of the essentials and even a photo session of his own, and finally cropping the photo – so back into composition – the thing that ‘makes’ the picture.
But, there is more, tucked away in here is fabulous advice on how to capture the beauty of white or black coats! He calls it the Allan Fur Factor, and to prove the point he has a picture of a white dog against a white background and with a white lamp to the side – and it is all distinguishable and in focus, can you do that?
A well bound soft cover book.