A friend of mine buys and sells jewelry on eBay. When she is selling she is very careful to do a good job photographing the items. There is plenty of light, the camera is steady and the item looks good when it appears in the ad. When she is buying jewelry she pays special attention to the poorly photographed items. They generally sell for less and she picks up bargains.

There is a family interested in adopting a White German Shepherd and there are several dogs shown at http://www.echodogs.org/dogs.htm. How does the prospective family decide which dog they want?

Sadie, a wonderful White German Shepherd, was recently adopted. I had the pleasure of knowing her and providing the photograph used in her description. I think we all know the picture of the dog and the written description are both important in finding a placement for the dog. This brief article describes how you can improve the picture you submit. Is it worth doing that? Let's put it this way - might a good picture shorten the time the dog spends in a foster home? Just for the fun of it, let's suppose that a good picture will shorten the stay by one day. Is it worth putting minutes into getting a good picture to save a day of foster care? When people are scanning the available dogs the picture will be the first thing they notice.

Here are some tips on getting a good photograph.

Know your camera
That is, read the manual to find out how to do what you need to do. I know that more people write manuals than read them but try it.

Hold the camera steady when you are shooting
A point and shoot camera encourages you to not hold it steady because it has an LCD display (which makes you hold the camera out away from your body) instead of a traditional viewfinder (which you have to hold up to your eye which in turn helps brace the camera and steady it). Brace the camera against your knee, a door jamb, a chair, etc. It will make a difference. These pictures were taken with a point and shoot.

Get down to the dog's level
A straight ahead shot works much better than a shot from above. The personality comes out much better in a straight on shot.

If you can, shoot outdoors or with good available light instead of using a flash
A flash can easily produce glare from the eyes of the dog. If you can avoid using a flash, you will have an easier time following the next recommendation because the dog will be more likely to hang around for you to take more pictures. A flash is distracting and possibly frightening to a dog. But if you have to use a flash, shoot when the dog is looking off to the side. This will save the dog's eyes and reduce the glare.

Be patient
I got a decent picture of Sadie because I took 31 shots. The one we used was sixth from the end. Think about this: a good professional photographer doing action shots(such as dogs) will be very happy if 5% of the shots turn out well. We aren't much worse than that here.

Most point and shoot cameras have a very irritating quality when it comes to shooting dogs and children, subjects best described as squirmy. Everything is looking great on the display, you push the button and then you wait. And wait. And the dog or the child is off somewhere else. I think of these as "Oh sh__" cameras. I have had my share. Having used point and shoots that were not as good as yours, I can tell you that with enough patience you will get a good shot. Maybe not the one you wanted but good enough. Just hang in there.

If you can take the time to do it right I'm confident you will do a good job. But if you aren't happy with your photography or you don't have the time, find someone who can do it for you. Do you go to church? If you stand up and say "I've got a rescue dog and I need some good pictures of it to get it placed" I will bet there are at least two or three people who can and will do it for you. Youth groups or high schools will have some budding photographers who can benefit from the experience. Just show them Sadie's picture and ask them to "do something like that." Every photographer alive thinks they can do better. And a lot of them are right. Give them the chance to show you that.

Finally, just about any shot benefits from editing in programs such as Photoshop. I will be happy to help by cropping the image, correcting color, removing a few distracting items (e.g. telephone pole "growing" out of the dog's head), or getting the dog to stand out against the background. I cannot remove the effects of blur or deal with extremely dark or light images. Contact me at this email address before sending an image.

Shooting dogs can be a lot of fun. Just remember to use a camera.

Good dog, lousy picture

Better but we aren't there yet

Getting better

We'll go with this one