Low Light Action Dog Photography in Aberdeenshire

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Low light photography of any kind is always a bit of a challenge but when you add a fast moving dog into the mix, it becomes even more challenging...

Last weekend, Hairy Dog Photography was out in deepest, darkest Aberdeenshire (well, only Laurencekirk but it was pretty dark) to meet Jimmy the Westiepoo and his owners.  It's a familiar set of circumstances to most Scottish photographers - dark, deep cloud cover, constant threat of rain etc.  Also, Jimmy's session was in the woods near his home so the little light available to us was also filtered through the branches of the trees.
Modern cameras have come a long way compared to even 10 years ago - we can now crank up the ISO to levels which would have been laughable not so very long ago but the pay off is loss of detail when we remove the noise (grain) from our images.  At dark Scottish weddings, this is less of a problem - the shutter speed doesn't need to be too high because people don't move all that quickly.  The same is true of landscape photography - it's why we have tripods!  But with dog photography these options are suddenly unavailable, the shutter speed is all important - it's just *got* to be high enough to freeze the action.  No point having beautiful composition, light, backdrop etc if your subject is out of focus!

Low light can be a help too - very little in the way of contrast or harsh shadows!

Sometimes, the available light just isn't enough, or even close to enough and that's why I always have at least one flash (or strobe, or speedlight or whatever you want to call it), a lightstand or two and a few portable softboxes.  Sometimes I'll hump all this gear around for a whole photo session and never use it but I'd rather have it and not need it than be cursing about not having it...

Low light action dog photography in Aberdeenshire.

Usually, my intention is to make the flash look as natural as possible.  It's a case of balancing it with the existing light so you don't end up with a very "flashy" looking image - one which is obviously just pumped full of flash light and nothing else.  I particularly like to use my flashes away from my camera to get interesting action shots of dogs - often you end up with a bit of motion blur in the paws or tail, with the dog's face perfectly captured in focus as the flash finds the target.  Sometimes it's the other way round of course so you keep trying :-D

Hopefully, it's not immediately obvious that flash has been used here to bring out the colours and put some light into Jimmy's eyes.

Anyway, I suppose the point of all this is really just to say that there's very little to hold a creative photographer back these days - the dark, dismal days of Winter can be made to look rather lovely with the right kit, the right knowledge and a positive attitude :-)  Looking forward to lots more atmospheric shoots over the coming weeks and months.  If you'd like to buy a session for your own dog, or a dog photography gift voucher as a present, now's the time to do it - they're reduced to just £50 instead of £70 until the end of December - please see my Aberdeen Dog Photography website for details.

This 'ray of sunshine' was created with an off camera flash in an otherwise very dark conifer plantation on a rainy Aberdeenshire day!