Darryl Brooks Photography

In the UK we are a nation of animal-lovers, and as such I get a lot people booking me for a photoshoot -  not for them - but for their beloved pet! And why not?!  We spend a lot of time with them so why not have a few professional photos of them looking their best? I have photographed many different animals, from rabbits up to horse, and can do studio shoots (for the smaller ones!) or come to your home or another location for an outdoor photoshoot. Get in touch through the website to enquire about booking a place for your pet.

I did an outdoor portrait shoot in the bright sunshine at the weekend, so used a number of natural-light photography techniques, such as diffusers (to calm the harsh sun falling on the subject) or reflector to bounce light into the shadows.   This post is about the use of flash though. But... it's sunny, so why do we need flash? Well, it's about shaping the light and balancing the ambient/background light with that falling on the subject. In the image 1, this is what it looks like with the camera set to make it bright enough to see the subject (F6.3 1/250s) which is all fine, but the background looks a bit washed out and the sky is boring and white. image exposed for the subject, making the sky washed out Looking at image 2 , this is exposed to get that brilliant blue sky by increasing the shutter speed by 3 stops (keeping at F6.3, but the shutter is now 1/2000s) putting the subject in darkness. I wanted to use flash to fill in those shadows...