Long Creek Farm

Sep 13, 20233 min read

Photographing Animals

Updated: Sep 16

Photographing almost anything takes skill, patience, and a good sense of humor. Animals are no exception.

Below I give a list of difficulties and some solutions.

Bad lighting

There are settings you can put your camara on to make the most of bad lighting, but I just recommend coming back later. The difference between a photo taken in good light and bad light is huge.

So, you ask what is good light? Soft sun and not glairing sun, and solid shade and not dappled shade. These pictures speak for themselves.

Generally, mornings just after sunrise and evenings an hour or two before sunset are the best. But overcast afternoons can sometimes be good for pictures too. I'd say the best days for photographing are cloudy days that are not too bright and not too dark.

Bad backgrounds

There are two options to try, move the animal or blur the background.

Often moving the animal is not an option, so the best idea would be to use a long lens and move far away from your subject and zoom in to get a close-up picture with the undesirable background now blurred,

most pictures look best with blurred backgrounds anyways.

Bad animals

Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and surrender to uncooperative animals. We do that a lot.

Come back later. Or if you must take the picture then (for example: a person wants to buy the animal and they are waiting for an up-dated picture, or it's ABOUT to rain and your camara is ABOUT to die) Try to catch them in the most normal position.

For example: when goat kids are playing, try waiting until they pause before head butting the other goat. Or when chickens are scratching, wait until their head goes up between scratches.

Animals that turn their backs on the camara.

I don't know why they do this, but a lot of animals spin around as soon as they see a camara, maybe it's because they see it as a predator staring at them. This problem can be solved by using long lens and zooming in, that way they might not even realize they are on camara.

Get red in the picture.

For some reason having red in pictures makes the other colors brighter, so ideally get some red (and white and blue :) in your pictures.

Goats (and donkeys) that would rather be in your lap than in front of the camara.

If your goats are anything like ours, the second you get down on your knees to take a picture the babies come running over and leap into your lap, the does run over and stick their heads over your shoulder or chew on your hair, and they are always too close for a picture, well a picture of their whole body, not just one ear.

For these friendly animals you might just have to photograph from outside the fence or wait until they are distracted.

Pigs who would love to eat the camara, your toes, your arms, EVERYTHING.

A big problem with pigs, everything is food or almost food to them. With our pigs sometimes our only option is to stand on the outside of the fence. but even then, they stand too close for a good picture.

You might try having another person go to the other side of the fence and distract them then you can try zooming in and taking the picture that way.

WARNING ⚠ Giving pigs food while you try to take pictures doesn't work! They keep their faces in the grass and all you'll see is their backs.

In case you're wondering if you can put at least the piglets up on something...we have tried putting the piglets on a wagon to try and keep them still... well come to find out, pigs walk backwards when they are up high, or some have a fear of heights and just lay down.