How I get natural looking photos of my puppies

I have been so busy this week! My husband works for the post office, and if you see any news at all you know all the stuff going on there! Locally they closed our processing facility, which left my husband with no job to do here in town. He is an MPE level 9?? Basically he is a mechanic on the processing machines, he has a degree in Industrial Electronics. So now he is being transferred into a position as a clerk working at a window selling stamps. Which they have to send him to school for, so he has been gone all week. Leaving me with two kids and 6 pups to care for all on my own. So that is why the blog has been so quite this week. Lucky for me he will be home tomorrow, then I might need a vacation. :)

Anyway I meant to post this video much sooner. I have been getting quite a few questions about photographing puppies. So I sat this video up so you can see how these last photos were taken. The big thing to remember is that I wanted to work in an environment that would leave the pups at their most comfortable, and at a time that they were most active. So we started in the morning right as they were eating, even before I had a chance to clean the mess up - right in the area they make most their mess in.

In this video you will see my set up and Bugsy's photo shoot the images from the shoot can be found in this post. More video of the other puppies will follow as I have time to set them up.

Some questions I have been asked:

What camera do I use: Canon 5D

What lens do I use: For this shoot I used the 24-70 2.8L lens

Lights: The photo shoot before these on the gray were in natural light but for these I used an AB400 on a 3x5?? softbox also from Alien Bee.

The backdrops: The blue one is distressed - not peed on. It came looking like it had stains. :) I got it from Photo Prop Floors and Backdrops you can find them on Facebook, the actual backdrop can be found here 

The ivory tiles one came from Denny's Mfg It's a 5x7 freedom cloth and that actual background can be found here: Euro Mix Ivory Tile

Raw or Jpg: RAW always. :)

If you have any other questions about how I photographed the puppies or about the puppies themselves please leave a comment or drop me a line. Also don't forget to join my blog so you can follow along as there is more video and photos coming up in the next few days!