Lighting a pet photo: windows, shade, lamps and flash

This page covers light: where the light should come from, which light source to use, and what goes wrong with lamps, flash and night modes. Light decides how much of your pet's fur, markings and eyes the camera can record. A portrait can only show your pet's face as well as the photo shows it, so light is the first thing to get right. The pet photo guide covers the other steps, from focus to file size.

If you want the short version, the article on how to photograph your pet for a portrait gives ten quick tips. This page explains why each lighting choice works, so you can fix a photo that looks wrong.

What good light does for a pet photo

A camera records light that bounces off your pet. Where there is little light, the phone records less detail, and dark fur can turn into one flat shade. Where the light is harsh, bright patches lose their texture and deep shadows hide an eye or an ear.

Good light for a portrait photo has three qualities that you can check before you press the button:

• It is soft. Shadows under the chin and around the eyes have soft edges.
• It comes from the front or the side. The face is lit, and your pet is brighter than the background.
• It is one colour. One type of light, daylight or lamp light, falls on the whole coat.

The sections below show how to get each one at home with no special equipment.

Window light indoors

A window is the easiest source of soft light in most homes. A volunteer photographer writing for Cats Protection, a UK cat charity, says natural light through a window can give sharp photos with lots of detail and highlights. The American Kennel Club (AKC) gives the same advice for puppies: position them by a window that gets nice light.

Where you put yourself matters as much as where you put your pet. Follow this order:

1. Choose a window that does not have direct sun coming through it. Direct sun makes hard shadows on the floor and on the face.
2. Place your pet a short distance back from the glass, with its face turned toward the window.
3. Stand or kneel with the window beside you or behind you. The light should fall on your pet's face, and you should not be pointing the phone at the glass.
4. Turn off the room lamps. The next section explains why.

If your pet will only settle in one spot, such as a bed or a chair, move the bed near the window and let your pet settle there.

Side light and a reflector

Light from one side shows the texture of the fur, and the far side of the face can go dark. The AKC suggests using a reflector to add life to a dog's eyes and says something as simple as a white foam core board can do the job. A reflector is any large white or light surface held on the dark side of your pet, so that it bounces window light back into the shadow. A sheet of white card, a pillowcase over a chair back or a helper in a white shirt can do the same job.

Why light from behind turns a pet dark

Cats Protection explains that a backlit subject will appear dark, like a silhouette, in your photo. A silhouette is a dark outline with no detail inside it. The AKC article on dog photos gives the same warning: if light shines from behind your dog, the dog will be shadowed.

The AKC uses this effect on purpose for a silhouette photo: it advises setting the exposure, the brightness setting, for a bright background, which leaves the dog completely black. For a portrait photo you want the opposite. Turn around so that the window or the sun is behind you, and your pet's face is the brightest part of the picture. The page on black, white and two-tone coats shows how to set the brightness yourself when a dark coat still looks too dark.

Outdoors: shade and golden hour

Outdoors, the AKC recommends two kinds of light: shade, and golden hour. It defines golden hour as the first hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset. The Cats Protection volunteer describes golden hour light as more red and soft.

Shade works at any time of day. Open shade is the area on the shady side of a house, a fence or a large tree, where your pet is out of the direct sun and can still see a wide area of open sky. Face your pet toward the open side, away from the dark wall or trunk, so the light from the sky reaches its eyes.

Golden hour light is warm in colour, so expect a red or golden tint on a white or grey coat. The next section explains why the colour of light changes the colour of fur.

Lamps, bulbs and mixed colours

Light has a colour, and the colour changes with the source. Encyclopaedia Britannica explains that light can be measured by its colour temperature, in units called kelvins. Light rich in red rays has a low reading. Britannica gives a figure of 2,800 kelvins for ordinary household bulbs, while daylight, which is richer in blue, can measure from 5,000 kelvins to more.

In practice, this means a lamp gives a yellow or orange tint and a window gives a cooler, bluer light. When the window lights one side of your pet and a lamp lights the other, each side takes the colour of its own light. A white chest can then come out bluish on one side and orange on the other, and no single colour setting makes both halves look natural.

The fix is to choose one source:

Lamps can still give a good photo. The Cats Protection volunteer says it is even possible to get great shots of cats in the spotlight of a desk lamp. Keep the lamp to one side and in front of your pet, and turn off any other light that has a different colour.

Flash and glowing eyes

A phone flash is a small light placed right next to the lens. It makes most pet eyes glow.

The American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists (ACVO) explains why. Most dogs and cats have a tapetum lucidum, a reflective layer at the back of the eye. Its job is to reflect light back onto the retina a second time, which helps the animal see in the dark. When a flash fires from right beside the lens, that layer sends the light straight back into the camera. The ACVO says the reflection can be green, blue, orange or yellow, and that the colour often changes over the first 3 months of life.

Some dogs have no tapetum. The ACVO says this is most common in dogs with blue eyes. In those dogs the flash lights up the blood vessels at the back of the eye instead, which gives the red eye look seen in photos of people.

For a portrait, a glowing eye hides the real eye colour, and eye colour is one of the details you most want the portrait to keep. Cats Protection also advises switching the flash off because it could startle or scare a cat. An AKC article on puppy photos quotes a breeder who says never to use a flash with puppies.

On an iPhone, Apple's support guide says the camera is set to use the flash automatically when needed. Tap the Flash control above the camera frame to switch between Auto, On and Off, and choose Off. On a Pixel phone, the flash setting sits under Settings in the Camera app.

Night modes and low light

When a room is dim, some phones switch to a night mode. Google's help page for Pixel phones says Night Sight turns on by itself in low light in Photo or Portrait mode, and asks you to hold still for a few seconds while the phone takes the photo. It also says the automatic Night Sight does not work when the flash is on.

A night mode works well for a sleeping pet. For a pet that is awake, a few seconds is a long time. Any movement of the head during that time smears the face, and the eyes lose their sharp edge. The better answer is to add light: open the curtains, move to a brighter room, or wait for the morning. Cats Protection suggests shooting outdoors or in a well-lit room, and says that if you cannot find enough natural light on a larger camera, you can raise the ISO to make photos brighter and keep the flash off. ISO is the setting that makes a camera more sensitive to light.

The page on sharp pet photos explains the link between light and movement blur in more detail.

A quick lighting check before you shoot

Before you start, run through this list:

• Is the light falling on your pet's face?
• Is your pet the brightest thing in the frame?
• Are all the lights one colour, with the lamps off when you use a window?
• Is the flash set to Off?
• Can you see a small reflection of the window or the sky in each eye?

That last point is a good sign. The small bright spot in each eye is called a catchlight, and it shows the light is in front of your pet. Cats need extra patience at this step, and the page on photographing cats covers how to keep a cat calm while you set up. When the light passes all five checks, you are ready to take the photo and bring it to the portrait studio.