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A fun photoshoot for Donna

A behind-the-scenes look at Donna’s behaviour during our photoshoot with food

You may have realised that most of my photos are candid shots from our day-to-day lives. It helps to capture those moments and diary our life with Donna, so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with such shots.

And I actually don’t like to spend time staging for pictures. I’m just plain lazy.

But it was one of those days, when I had a little bit of energy to do something different for once. So I decided to try to stage a picture of Donna launching up the table with her front paws, grinning at some treats.

The treats were plain boiled protein, nothing fancy. The fancy part involved having Donna stand on her two feet with her fore paws on the table supporting her vertical pose. And hopefully, I would be able to capture her grinning at the yummy treats.

The result was more outtakes than anything remotely useful.


Trial shots. Lots blurry shots because of bad indoor lighting. Decided the background over here is ugly. 

Of course, Donna was tempted by the fresh cooked food. But it’s easy enough to distract her from the styled food by rewarding her with the rest of the cooked food that was not being photographed.

She does know the “Leave it” command, but it was just funny looking at her struggling that I just let her mess up the display after a while :P

So the whole time, she was like a jack rabbit, hopping up and down the table with her front paws. She can’t hold the position very long, so she kept dropping and popping up again.

All that action made it very exciting for her so even though she usually doesn’t like the camera, she actually had quite a bit of fun with this shoot.


Moved treats to the other side of the table next to the wall so I get a clean background.
Made sure there is space for Donna to hop around between the table and the wall. 

And you know what, all that jumping is quite a workout for her!


Donna preferred the bigger space on the ugly side though. So she kept hopping up, dropping down, running to the other side and hopping up again. Almost like a those games where a head pops out of the hole and you’re supposed to hammer it back down again. :P 

She was a very happy dog that day because she had a lot of extra fresh cooked protein in her system during and after the shoot. And all for having a great time because hopping around rather than sleeping made it an exciting afternoon for her. ;)

The shot of the day: 
And also the only shot that was close to what I wanted. Have to say the image quality is poor because of poor lighting indoors, which meant I had to over-process. Not a good thing, but I’ll live.  ;)

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16 Comments

  1. Love it! Donna is very photogenic.

  2. I think the picture came out nice. :)

  3. Great photo shoot and results. Sometimes one of those outtakes makes the best shot!

  4. I think they came out great! She has a great smile.

  5. I think these are wonderful, creative shots! :)

  6. Donna doesn’t work for peanuts.

  7. Luckily digital cameras are around, I swear my ratio of good to bad photos has to hover around 1 to 100 on a good day. But like your last shot with Donna, it’s worth it to get that one amazing photo you’ll always have.

  8. What great photos! Donna looks like such a happy girl!

  9. Good job Donna! Wooooowoooooooooo!

  10. What a fun idea, it looks like Donna had a great time!

  11. Hawk aka BrownDog

    Hi Y’all!

    Oh dear, my Human would, as she said, have a “come to God” moment with me if she ever saw me up at the counter like that. I get in a devil of trouble if I even sniff at the edge of the counter!

    Now that I’m over my shock! What a wonderful photo!

    Gotta go now, there are some fresh home baked treats on the kitchen counter. I have to go see if I can finagle some!

    Y’all come by now,
    Hawk aka BrownDog

  12. Some good shots there! We do a lot of staging, but Mom is quick and we are cooperative, so it usually takes less than 10 mins for the whole shoot.

  13. These are great Jz-I think I should try more of these kind of day-to-day shots myself-I have gotten some great ideas from you-Thank you!

  14. Thanks for sharing the process. It was very interesting to see how you got to the shot.

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