Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Photographing Holland Lops
Whether you want to photograph your Holland lops for your website or you want to make money with rabbits by turning your photos into products to sell, you want to take the very best ones you can. Even if you just want to email them to friends and brag on your furry buddies, you want them to look good.
Now everything I say not to do, I've done. When I started my website, my photos were awful. Some of the old ones are still on my site, in fact, because I no longer have the rabbit and can't take new ones. And they took too long to load. And there were many other things wrong with them. They aren't perfect now, but boy are they an improvement over just a year ago. Here are some of the things I've learned about photographing Hollands:
Posing - Don't photograph unposed rabbits! The improvement in the quality of my rabbit photos is correlated 100% with my improvement in posing my rabbits. No good pose, no good picture. Now sometimes I have a time crunch and need to get a bunny on my for sale page. I don't like that they aren't posed, but it's the best I can do in the time I've got. If a show rabbit, on the other hand, won't pose, I'd rather try him or her later than take pictures.
For the best quality photos, I give my rabbit a few minutes to become comfortable and a little bored with being outside on the table. It's harder to get their attention when they are still checking out the plant behind them. Then I pose them when they are feeling more cooperative. Sometimes nothing I do helps and I just sit down for awhile and let them strike a natural pose. Then I strike while the iron is hot. Those are some of the best pictures.
It would be lovely to have some help taking photos of my rabbits. Oh, if you can just see the poses that don't last long enough to pick up the camera and snap the shot! If you've got help, though, have one person pose and the other take the photos.
Light - It is incredible the dfference in the quality of the photo and the amount of detail that shows up when you have good lighting. And, unless you have some professional lighting at your disposal, outdoor lighting is the very best. I love a bright, but overcast day for taking photos. First, I don't want my rabbits to suffer in the direct sunlight, and second, strong sunlight casts dark shadows. A dim overcast day is not a good option if it looks more like early twilight outside than midday.
DIgital - Don't use film. Digital cameras are the only way to go. You do not need to feel that you are wasting film when you are photographing your rabbits. I have taken over 100 shots in the past to get four shots I really liked. I generally don't have to take as many now, but I do take ample. Just moving over a few inches can really improve a shot.
The advantages of using digital are obvious if you are putting the photos on the web, email, or sending it to have a mug, t-shirt, or greeting card made. There's no practical way around it.
[By the way, I use a Kodak digital camera with camera dock and I love it. I haven't purchased one single battery for my camera since I got it and by putting it on the dock between uses, I never have to wait for it to charge up.]
Angle - Make sure you get down on the rabbit's level to take the photograph. Pictures from above look funky. They just do. And be sure to take several angles while you've got the rabbit posed. When you look at them later, you may find that certain angles make you feel like the rabbit is about to fall off of the table. A slightly different angle with produce a photo with lovely composition that catches your rabbit looking his or her best.
By the way, when photographing rabbits for sale, take one dead-on in the front and one dead-on from the side. Photos taken at a 3/4 angle are beautiful, but you can't evaluate chest width, width between the eyes, crown placement, shoulder, or topline that way. If you want your customers to be satisfied with their purchases, they need to have as much information abou tthe rabbit as they can get before actually seeing it.
Website - If you are going to place the photo on your website, please optimize it. Many people still connect at 56K and slow photo-loading is a rampant problem on rabbit breeder websites. Make sure you crop, sharpen, and resize your photo before you place it into your website. If you just shrink it down once you've placed it on your webpage, it will take the exact same amount of time to load as it did when it was big.
If you do not have software that will allow you to resize your photo (actually in the pixel size, not just in the size you see), then you can go to http://www.irfanview.net/ and get their freeware. I started using it a few weeks ago and like it alot. I haven't optimized all of the photos on my website, but I'm in the process and have already made a lot of improvements to my loading time.
A note about cropping: in the beginning, I cropped my photos to optimize each photo for itself. I ended up with all sorts of odd sizes. If found that it made it harder to make a page look well put together. So I started cropping to the same proportions (not necessarily the same size). That way, I can put together photos taken in February, June, and September and have them look like a matched set rather than odds and ends.
Background - Pay some attention to the background. Now please don't go looking at some of my older pictures. Yes, you can see cars and rabbit cages in the background. I prefer the ones I've shot with mountains or plants or even the shed wall in the background. I don't really like the photos I've seen that have gotten too artsy, though. The rabbit should still be the main focus of the photo and not too many props. The background should complement, not overshadow, the bunny.
Now let's see some beautiful Holland lop photos and show the world how beautiful our bunnies are!
Laurie Stroupe
The Nature Trail Rabbitry
"Holland Lops of Distinction"
http://www.thenaturetrail.com/
http://www.thenaturetrail.com/blog/BLOG
¶ 3:26 PM
Now everything I say not to do, I've done. When I started my website, my photos were awful. Some of the old ones are still on my site, in fact, because I no longer have the rabbit and can't take new ones. And they took too long to load. And there were many other things wrong with them. They aren't perfect now, but boy are they an improvement over just a year ago. Here are some of the things I've learned about photographing Hollands:
Posing - Don't photograph unposed rabbits! The improvement in the quality of my rabbit photos is correlated 100% with my improvement in posing my rabbits. No good pose, no good picture. Now sometimes I have a time crunch and need to get a bunny on my for sale page. I don't like that they aren't posed, but it's the best I can do in the time I've got. If a show rabbit, on the other hand, won't pose, I'd rather try him or her later than take pictures.
For the best quality photos, I give my rabbit a few minutes to become comfortable and a little bored with being outside on the table. It's harder to get their attention when they are still checking out the plant behind them. Then I pose them when they are feeling more cooperative. Sometimes nothing I do helps and I just sit down for awhile and let them strike a natural pose. Then I strike while the iron is hot. Those are some of the best pictures.
It would be lovely to have some help taking photos of my rabbits. Oh, if you can just see the poses that don't last long enough to pick up the camera and snap the shot! If you've got help, though, have one person pose and the other take the photos.
Light - It is incredible the dfference in the quality of the photo and the amount of detail that shows up when you have good lighting. And, unless you have some professional lighting at your disposal, outdoor lighting is the very best. I love a bright, but overcast day for taking photos. First, I don't want my rabbits to suffer in the direct sunlight, and second, strong sunlight casts dark shadows. A dim overcast day is not a good option if it looks more like early twilight outside than midday.
DIgital - Don't use film. Digital cameras are the only way to go. You do not need to feel that you are wasting film when you are photographing your rabbits. I have taken over 100 shots in the past to get four shots I really liked. I generally don't have to take as many now, but I do take ample. Just moving over a few inches can really improve a shot.
The advantages of using digital are obvious if you are putting the photos on the web, email, or sending it to have a mug, t-shirt, or greeting card made. There's no practical way around it.
[By the way, I use a Kodak digital camera with camera dock and I love it. I haven't purchased one single battery for my camera since I got it and by putting it on the dock between uses, I never have to wait for it to charge up.]
Angle - Make sure you get down on the rabbit's level to take the photograph. Pictures from above look funky. They just do. And be sure to take several angles while you've got the rabbit posed. When you look at them later, you may find that certain angles make you feel like the rabbit is about to fall off of the table. A slightly different angle with produce a photo with lovely composition that catches your rabbit looking his or her best.
By the way, when photographing rabbits for sale, take one dead-on in the front and one dead-on from the side. Photos taken at a 3/4 angle are beautiful, but you can't evaluate chest width, width between the eyes, crown placement, shoulder, or topline that way. If you want your customers to be satisfied with their purchases, they need to have as much information abou tthe rabbit as they can get before actually seeing it.
Website - If you are going to place the photo on your website, please optimize it. Many people still connect at 56K and slow photo-loading is a rampant problem on rabbit breeder websites. Make sure you crop, sharpen, and resize your photo before you place it into your website. If you just shrink it down once you've placed it on your webpage, it will take the exact same amount of time to load as it did when it was big.
If you do not have software that will allow you to resize your photo (actually in the pixel size, not just in the size you see), then you can go to http://www.irfanview.net/ and get their freeware. I started using it a few weeks ago and like it alot. I haven't optimized all of the photos on my website, but I'm in the process and have already made a lot of improvements to my loading time.
A note about cropping: in the beginning, I cropped my photos to optimize each photo for itself. I ended up with all sorts of odd sizes. If found that it made it harder to make a page look well put together. So I started cropping to the same proportions (not necessarily the same size). That way, I can put together photos taken in February, June, and September and have them look like a matched set rather than odds and ends.
Background - Pay some attention to the background. Now please don't go looking at some of my older pictures. Yes, you can see cars and rabbit cages in the background. I prefer the ones I've shot with mountains or plants or even the shed wall in the background. I don't really like the photos I've seen that have gotten too artsy, though. The rabbit should still be the main focus of the photo and not too many props. The background should complement, not overshadow, the bunny.
Now let's see some beautiful Holland lop photos and show the world how beautiful our bunnies are!
Laurie Stroupe
The Nature Trail Rabbitry
"Holland Lops of Distinction"
http://www.thenaturetrail.com/
http://www.thenaturetrail.com/blog/BLOG
¶ 3:26 PM
