There was nowhere to go in May 2020. That is how a dining table in my flat became a studio for an afternoon, and how my husky, Gubbio, became the only booking on the calendar.
Why the table
Photographing a dog on the floor means photographing the floor. You end up shooting down at the top of a head, or lying on your stomach at the wrong end of a room, with a skirting board and a chair leg in every frame.
Putting him on the dining table solved three problems at once. It brought him up to lens height, so I could work standing and meet him eye to eye. It cleared the background, because at that height the camera sees the dark side of the room instead of the furniture. And it drew a boundary he understood: a dog on a table knows he is somewhere unusual, and tends to stay put rather than wander off to check the kitchen.
What he looks like in the dark
In a dark room a husky stops being a pet and becomes a shape. A pale mask, black-rimmed eyes, ears up, and an outline that lifts itself off the background without any help from me.
That coat is two coats — a coarse outer layer over a dense undercoat — and it holds light like nothing else I have photographed. The edge of him reads as thousands of separate hairs rather than a shape cut out of the dark, and a short-coated dog simply does not do this.
He did not flinch at any of it: not the flare in the corner of that frame, not me moving around the table, not the camera a foot from his nose.
Calm and still
Setting the room up was the quick part. The rest of the afternoon came down to one dog staying calm and staying still, which is the actual skill in pet photography and the part nobody can plan for you.
What works: go slowly, keep your voice flat and low, and let him get on and off the table a few times before anything is expected of him. Work in short stretches. Stop long before he is bored, not after. And accept that half of what you get will come in the moments when he has decided, on his own, to settle.
As it turned out, none of that was needed here. No treats, no squeaky toy, nobody waving behind the camera. He got up on the table, he sat where he was put, and he looked where the lens was. Most dogs make you earn it. This one did not.
A husky is a natural poser
I am aware of how this sounds, and I will say it anyway: a husky knows what he looks like. Ears up, chest square, chin at exactly the angle a portrait photographer would ask a human subject for and rarely get. There is no coaxing in these frames. He sat, he looked into the lens, and he held it.
Watch a husky in a park and you will see the same thing. They stop, they stand, they look into the middle distance. It is an elegant animal that carries itself as though it has been photographed before, and the job is mostly to be ready when it does.
The one I kept
Chin flat on the table, eyes up, the last of the light on the top of his head. Not the most handsome frame of the set — the upright sit is the handsome one — but it is the one that looks like him at six in the evening, which is the only test a portrait of your own dog has to pass.
What it is worth knowing for your own dog
Get the animal off the floor and up to your eye. Work in a dark room, where the background takes care of itself. Keep the session short and stop early. And photograph your dog properly at least once, in good light, while he is exactly the age he is now — there is no second chance at that.
The full set from that afternoon is on SmugMug.