Customer Reviews

Creative Canine Photography

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Creative Canine Photography is showcases expert photographic work from an award-winning animal photographer Larry Allan. Creative Canine Photography provides plenty of practical tips to successful canine photography, from capturing expressions and using correct lighting to avoiding red-eye and getting detailed exposures for all-white or all-black fur. Color photos throughout Creative Canine Photography illustrate all concepts.

I love photographing my dogs and my skills had developed to the point that friends, family and fellow dog club members were frequently asking me to photograph their dogs too. I needed a book that would help me with two things. First, I had to learn more about lighting and second I had to learn the best camera settings to get the texture and detail in a dog's coat regardless of coat color. This book gave me both and much more. It's a very easy and enjoyable read. Parts of the book are a little too basic for me but that's a small price to pay for the great tips it contains. I definately recommend this book to anyone who wants to improve their canine potography skills.

The author explains very early in the book that the use of the term "Creative" in the title is intended mean creating a photograph that captures the personality of the dog. The book is written to help the photographer do just that.

This is a very good book to help any photographer properly pose and light dogs. Regardless of the shape, size or color, the author shares the tips and tricks for getting classic portraits that your clients will love.

This is not a bunch of cute pictures taken by pet owners, but rather a professional approach for professional photography studios.

If you've little or no experience photographing anything this book might be helpful. Other than that I'd recommend you look elsewhere.

Much of this information is easily found on the internet in 5 minutes of searching. If you'd like to learn more about dog behavior to help photograph dogs I'd recommend a dedicated book on dogs.

My copy was published in 2003. It has 4 pages, total, of information on digital imaging. Admittedly digital camera technology has advanced by leaps and bounds in the 5 years since; to put it bluntly this book is sorely outdated.

The photography and poses are bland. A tip about creating an uncluttered background is ironic as the author provides scores of pictures with distracting background elements. Another tip about moving the flash off camera seems not to have been headed by the author either.

Spend you're money elsewhere. Even at $16 and change this books going to goodwill on my next run.

If you are interested in a very traditional approach from a professional photographer, this book will provide lots of information. It also provides valuable tips about controlling the dog. But for my taste, I found the photographic results to be uninspiring - too much posing, too much portraiture lighting, not enough of just plain capturing that wonderful dog as it is.

I found this book to be very informative and easy to follow. It has helped me so much with my photography. Hightly recommend to those just starting out.

Ever try to capture your favorite animal companion with your camera? Know how to use your camera but weak on how to shoot a great animal photo? This is a great resource, full of guidance through examples.

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 MB 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.