Paddy the Champ

I recently had the real privilege to be commissioned to shoot the cover of December’s Wag magazine by Dogs Trust. Earlier in the year, Paddy, a retriever cross owned by Andrea Rogers of the K9 pursuits centre in Newton Aycliffe, was awarded the accolade of being Dog of the year by Dogs Trust. Paddy was a former resident at the Darlington Rehoming Centre until adopted by Andrea – a qualified dog trainer and former worker at Dogs Trust. I set off early on a lovely autumn morning for a few hours of fun. Andrea and Gill Crawford run the business which looks after about 25 dogs for busy owners during working hours – like a doggy creche. She also runs training sessions, dog shows, and classes.

Andrea & GIll were really welcoming, and Paddy took to me straight away. He’s a handsome, furry, smiler of a dog with an extremely friendly temperament, and a definite aim to please. We had a cup of tea, and decided on a suitable spot to do the shoot. I needed a continuous background colour, or area of out-of-focus brightness to facilitate the placement of the magazine title and cover copy etc. Outside wasn’t really suitable, as it was absolutely freezing, and choc a bloc with industrial units, walls, fences and areas of sparsely vegetated borders. We decided to head indoors, up into the training room which overlooked the large area where the guests were playing and interacting. My brief was to shoot a close up head shot with suitable expression, and plenty of detail, then some behind the scenes images to illustrate the feel of the photoshoot. I was travelling light, so consequently didn’t have any background rolls. I found a free standing display board covered in padded cloth which was coloured a deep royal blue, and placed it about 4 feet behind the spot Paddy would be sitting. My idea was to use the spill light from a big softbox and diffused brollie to illuminate this, and reduce the intensity of the blue in post production.

Lighting was simple, with a 600J flash head metered at f/11, & fitted with a huge, undiffused softbox to the right, at a downwards angle of about 25 degrees to illuminate subject and background, and another head with silver brolly at f/8 firing from the other side at doggy eye level to fill shadows and give a catchlight in the eyes. The shutter speed was kept at 1/250th to get rid of the ambient light, and cut down on any blur caused by the fast movement of the dogs head. When shooting dogs close-up, there is quite a distance between eyes and nose, and this can cause a camera’s autofocus to concentrate on the closest bit (the nose), so it’s always best to go back to focusing manually to get the eyes pin sharp. f/11 is the sharpest aperture to use on the superb 24-70mm Nikon. I shot about 200 frames while my two helpers coerced Paddy into looking to camera, smiling, and looking handsome. I got some great shots, with a few tea breaks to give the Padster (and my bruised knees) a rest. After the key shots were taken we did some behind the scenes stuff, culminating in a brilliant image of Paddy behind the camera – taking pics of Andrea and Gill! I had a great time, & the client was really pleased with the results. Check out the K9 pursuits centre at www.k9pursuitsltd.co.uk & if you’re a Dogs Trust supporter, look out for the cover of December’s issue and the story inside.