Guide · Coats
How to get a good portrait of a black dog
A black coat swallows light. Most portraits of black dogs are a silhouette with two eyes in it. It does not have to be.
Why it is hard
A black coat is a hole in the picture.
A camera meters the whole frame. Point it at a black dog on a pale sofa and it exposes for the sofa, so the dog comes out as a shape with no detail in it — no muzzle, no eyebrows, no line where the ear meets the head. Point it at the dog alone and it brightens everything until the black goes grey and grainy. Neither is what you see with your eyes, which adjust to the dog and read the fur perfectly well.
A painting has the same problem in reverse. Black on a dark ground is a silhouette; black on a bright ground is a cut-out. What a black coat needs is light from the side, so that the fur has a lit edge and a shaded edge and the head has a shape, and a ground that is lighter than the animal but not white.
The shape of a black dog is drawn by the light on its edges, not by the black.
The photograph
Expose for the dog, light from the side, no flash.
Everything in the photo guide applies, and three things apply more.
- Take it outdoors in open shade, or beside a window. Bright, soft, sideways light is the whole trick. Direct sun makes the highlights on a black coat blow out to white; a dim room makes the whole animal disappear. An overcast day is the best day of the year for a black dog.
- Tap the screen on the dog’s face before you shoot. On every phone this both focuses and exposes for that point. The background will go a little bright; that is correct. What you want is to see the eyes, the nose leather and the fur texture on the cheek.
- No flash, ever. A flash on a black dog gives you a wet-looking nose, green eyes and a coat like patent leather. It also makes the studio’s job harder, because that is not what the fur looks like.
- Put something lighter behind them. A pale wall, a light floor, a garden. The studio replaces the background, but it reads the edge of the dog against it, and a black dog against a black chair has no edge.
Then look at the photograph at full size. Can you see the eyes as eyes, with a catchlight in them? Can you tell where the muzzle ends and the cheek begins? If yes, it will paint. If the face is a black oval, take another.
The place
Choose the scene by its ground, not its fame.
Of the seventeen places, three do the most for a black coat, and they are not the famous ones.
- Arsat Moulay Park — the old orchard. Low sun comes sideways through the olive leaves and lands on pale gravel, so the animal sits on a ground lighter than itself with light on one side of its face. This is the scene the studio built for a black dog.
- An adobe wall — one warm ochre wall, hard afternoon light, nothing else. Black against warm ochre is the strongest contrast in the collection without being harsh, and the sideways sun gives the head its shape.
- Bahia Palace — white marble and zellij under an overhead sun. A black cat or small black dog on a green velvet cushion in the middle of all that pale stone reads like ink on paper.
The scenes to be careful with are the dusk and lantern ones — Jemaa el-Fnaa and the souk at midday. Both are beautiful for a black coat when the photograph is good, because the lamps and the striped roof-light give the fur something to catch, but they forgive a dark photograph less.
The register
The Terrace shows the coat; the Study shows the face.
Two of the four included painting styles suit a black coat particularly. The Terrace is the photographic register — every strand legible, a little film grain — and it keeps the sheen a healthy black coat has, which is most of what makes a black dog handsome. The Study is soft, low-contrast and built around the eyes; it is the one for an older black dog whose muzzle has gone grey, because it makes the grey part of the portrait rather than a flaw in it.
The Courtyard, bright and impressionist, is the one to avoid: it treats a coat as masses of colour, and a black coat has one.
The frame
Natural or brown. Not black.
Prints are not being sold while the studio’s masters sit below its 300 ppi standard — what follows is for when they reopen, and for printing the file yourself. A black frame around a black dog closes the picture in. Natural oak-effect or brown continues the warm ground of the park or the wall and lets the animal be the darkest thing in the frame, which is where the eye goes. If the room is very pale, dark grey works. A mount helps: a band of white between the frame and a dark portrait makes the portrait read as a picture rather than a shadow on the wall. All eight finishes are on the prints page.
Black cats
Everything above, and the eyes matter more.
A black cat is a black dog with two lamps in it. The photograph has to have the eyes sharp and open — a cat’s pupils go to slits in bright light, so shade rather than sun — and the studio holds onto eye colour above almost anything else. Green, copper and gold eyes on a black cat are the portrait. The cat guide has the rest.
Questions
- My dog is black with a white chest. Does that change anything?
- It helps. A white blaze or chest gives the studio a fixed point to read the face and body against, and the painting keeps it exactly where it is in the photograph. Make sure the white is not blown out in the photo — if it reads as a white blob with no fur texture, the photo is too bright.
- What if the painting comes back too grey?
- Say so. The correction box under every painting takes a sentence — his coat is jet black, not charcoal — and the repaint is free. Corrections using the same photo and setting are free. Another photo or setting uses a new preview.
- Is there a breed this does not work for?
- No — but very long, very black coats (a Newfoundland, a black Afghan) hide the body’s shape completely, so the face has to carry the portrait. Photograph those from slightly below eye level with the light from the side, and choose the adobe wall or the park.
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