Dog Photography Photo Session Tips about your Dog’s Collar
Prior to meeting up with my clients for a photo shoot, I email them a Welcome Packet that has a lot of information in it to help them prepare for the session. Some of this information has to do with what type of collar your dog wears.
I don’t typically edit your dog’s collar out of the photos. I never edit out a harness. This is just my personal opinion but unless I’m doing commercial pet photography for a company that is selling harnesses, I just don’t prefer them in photos. I like a more clean look. (Of course your dog’s safety is the number one priority always.)
This is Max and I recently photographed him. He normally wears a harness but his parent’s read through the information I’d sent them and brought along a leash with a slip lead collar to use instead of his harness. It worked fine keeping him safe but I didn’t love the way it looked in the photos so I did edit it out.
You can see it below in the before photo. It was thick and not particularly attractive. I didn’t think it added anything to the photo, so I edited it out.
Once I had assessed Max’s energy and comfort level, I made the decision to switch from his leash to one that I brought. If I feel it’s appropriate, I will bring up this option with the pet parents.
My leash is actually a lead that is typically used in a show ring. It was the same style as the one Max’s parents had but mine is much thinner. It is very easy for me to edit out of the photo and typically it can’t even be seen around the neck.
Editing the collar out of any photo can be hard. My goal when I’m editing my photos is for them to look natural. Having to do a lot of editing to remove the collar can result in a final photo that doesn’t look great in my opinion. The heavily edited areas can look fake or not as sharp as other areas in the photo that aren’t as heavily processed. This is the main reason why I don’t edit collars out of photos.
Here are the before and after photos using my lead. The only place you see the leash or collar in the first photo is behind Max. That is a very simple edit to erase the leash from the photo.
If you compare this set of photos to the set above, you can clearly see the difference in the width of the leash. It’s not a huge difference but it makes a big difference in the editing process.
*Full disclosure. I used to have this same lead in tan. I lost it at a photo shoot in NoDa. I need to order another one. A tan lead would’ve worked even better than this dark brown one with Max’s fur color but regardless because it was smaller, it was much simpler to edit out of the original photo using Photoshop.
These are examples of why the collar and leash your dog has on matters.