Street photography is a popular pastime for amateur and professional photographers alike. It is often done with smaller, rangefinder cameras that allow the photographer to go unnoticed while they capture people going about their daily business. The images can be very powerful. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a master at street photography. His black and white images are some of the most iconic of the 20th century.

My doggy style street photography is not as stealthy or candid as was Cartier-Bresson’s. The camera rig (see below) weighs around 10 lbs, and is rather imposing to both small and large dogs. Confident dogs are curious and will come up and sniff the camera. while less secure dogs will shy away and even bark at the camera rig. Either way, it often results in some great expressions from my subjects.

When I’m out photographing dogs on the street or beach, I always ask the owner’s permission. I also try to hand out my business card and offer to send them an image or two of their pup.

For those of you who want the technical details, this is the camera rig I use when doing to street photography projects. I attach my Nikon D700 to a monopod and turn it upside down. I tape a SB800 flash unit to the monopod, as well as a Rogue Lightbender. Cables for the TTL flash and the shutter release and there you have it. On this outing I had the flash compensation dialed to -1 stop. Next time I will probably go -1 1/3 or -1 2/3. I think the flash was just a bit too hot.

I’d love to hear your feedback. Anybody out there doing anything similar?

This past weekend in Seattle was just gorgeous. The sun was out, temps approached the 60′s, and the dog parks were packed with dogs and humans. Unfortunately, during the middle of the day all that bright sun meant harsh lighting. But that is when the dogs were out. So I grabbed my camera and my low rig and headed out for some magic.

About the low rig. I’ve been thinking about ways to get low to the ground without having to crawl around on knee pads. I also want to be able to run with the camera low and have the dogs trail behind. I spent a lot of time searching the internet for a ready made solution to my problem. I considered The $14 Steadycam as an option and nearly purchased all the parts and pieces to make one. Then it occurred to me that I was thinking inside the box— that the camera needed to be right-side-up in order to take a picture. When I was able to wrap my brain around the idea that it didn’t matter to the photograph if the camera is right side up, the solution was simple. And I could put it all together using components I already had. My low rig consists of my camera with a cable release mounted to my monopod. I grab the monopod by the foot and hang the camera upside down. Later, I right the images in post-production. Simple.

Reactions to my rig were mixed: “What the …”

This pug looks sternly disapproving, while most dogs were curious about the low rig and the camera shutter noise.

“Whatchya got there?”

“Go ahead, kick the ball. I dare ya.”

Some dogs were intent on licking my 14-24mm lens, which has such a curved front element that you can’t attach a filter. Yuck!

The next step will be to add some sort of noise maker like a pneumatically controlled squeaky toy to the camera. That should be fun!