Products You've Viewed
We’ll keep track of the products you view here.
Articles You've Viewed
We'll track the last 7 articles you've viewed so you can quickly return to them.

Bill Landau's Tips for Taking Great Pictures of Pets

© Bill Landau Loading...

© Bill Landau

D1X, AF-S Zoom-NIKKOR 28-70mm f/2.8D IF-ED, 1/500 second, f/4.5, ISO 250, Manual exposure, Matrix metering

Download now Read More

The big secret is small sounds.

You're going to need a ton of patience to get the kind of pet pictures Bill Landau produces, but sound is going to be an incredibly important ingredient in the process.

Simply, find the sound that appeals to the pet you're photographing. And when you're searching for that sound, think soft, think subtle.

"One mistake a lot of pet shooters make is they get all these squeaky toys and think they've got to make a lot of noise to get the animal's attention," Bill says. "In reality, what works best are the small sounds, and those will vary from animal to animal. You'll soon find what works."

Bill has to try lots of different sounds because his subjects keep changing. A professional photographer for close to 25 years, Bill is now into a second career—running a library—but for over eight years he and his wife, Peggy, have been dedicated to taking the "Pet of the Week" photo that appears in the Arizona Daily Sun. Their subjects are chosen from the homeless dogs and cats at the Coconino Humane Association in Flagstaff, and they have a perfect record: every animal Bill's photographed has been adopted.

"I'll try everything to find the right sound: I'll moo and bark and cluck, but what usually works best is a little piece of scrap paper," he says. "I'll tear off a quarter of a sheet and roll it up in my hand, and that little noise, just rolling a little ball of paper, is often enough to get the animals to not only look, but cock their heads a little bit. It works especially well with cats, and that's about the loudest noise you want to make with a cat."

Or you can try rubbing two fingers together. Bill's camera is almost always on a tripod, so he can operate it with one hand. "I rub my thumb and forefinger—I can't hear that sound unless I put my fingers right up to my ear, but cats can hear it, and if my hands are just the right dryness, it makes a little drag on the texture of the skin, and that'll get them to look."

Another sound technique involves bringing his left hand to the top of the lens hood that he always uses on his NIKKOR lenses. "The hood has a bit of texture to it, and I just scratch my fingernail on top of the hood. That gets them to look right at that spot."