Tips for getting good pet photos for your pet portraits:

1. Get on your pets level – Get down on your pets level to take your photo, preferable the animals eye level.

2. Get in close – The best photos for our artwork are photos where the pets face fills the frame. We can crop in close, but if you can fill the frame with your animal it will produce a better photo for us to work with in the long run.

3. Freeze the motion – One of the hardest things about taking pictures of pets is getting a good sharp image. For your camera to use a faster shutter speed which will freeze the motion you will need to have good bright light to take the photo. Outside is best, but if you have to take it inside make sure you have all the lights turned on. Be careful about using a flash, they can hurt your pets eyes if pointed directly at them and they may scare your pet as well.

4. Get Someone to Help – Getting your pet to look at the camera can be a difficult task. Asking someone to help you by having them stand behind you with a squeak toy or calling their name can be very helpful getting them to look toward the camera. It can also help with getting your dog to raise its ears. Dog's with ears pinned down to their head can look scared. If you can get their attention and get them to perk their ears up you will have a much better photo.

5. Take lots of photos – If your camera shoots in burst mode use it to take lots of photos with one push of the button. This can help you with getting a sharper photo, as well as a good pose.

6. Background – Try keeping as much clutter out of the background of your photo as possible. This will help us keep your pets image from blending in with the background.

7. No toys – Do not send images with chew toys in the dog's mouth. They may look good for a photograph, but they do not translate well to our portraits.

8. MOST IMPORTANT – Remember these are not paintings, they are computer generated illustrations. That is not to say the computer does all the work, far from it. The computer is like the canvas, brushes and paint, we still must create the work. There is a lot of hand work that goes into creating each image. Each piece is unique and actually world be almost impossible for us to recreate, just like a painting. However we do not change the position of the pet or modify the original image except for minor clean up and cropping. So what you send us in terms of how the pet is positioned will be how the final artwork looks as well. Having the pets face smashed up against a pillow or laying on the ground will not produce a very good images for us to work with. Remember the photo may not be the best in terms of a photographic image, but they may work the best for giving us a framework on which to build your piece of art.

Remember the quality of the photo you send us in terms of the guidelines above will make all the difference in the final piece of art you get. We do not charge a deposit fee for the work we do, and prefer to keep it that way. But if we have a lot of people sending us poor images they just want to see what we can do with them, and then do not purchase, it costs us money and time that could be going to help the animals. So make sure the images you send us you would be happy with when we have done our work. (It only takes one image to create the artwork, but we ask for three so the artist can make the decision as to which would work best, however if you follow the guidelines above one image should be all we need. We also recognize that many of the pets we work on are no longer with us and it is impossible to take a another photo of them. We will do our best to create something with what you have and we will tell you if we don't think it will work.)