How to Setup a Dog Photo Booth at an Event or Animal Shelter

A dog photo booth is perfect for outdoor events like tradeshows, festivals or farmer’s markets where pets will be in attendance, or adoption events at your local pet store or animal shelter. A dog photo booth sounds simple, but with all of the distractions that are likely to be present it can be a difficult endeavor. The lighting setup can be as simple as a modified headshot setup, with two speedlights to the left and the right of the backdrop, and one light straight on in a soft box. If you’re outdoors you may even need less lighting.

Getting the Dogs Attention

With all of the distractions at an event it may be frustrating getting a dog’s attention but pet photography demands patience. Getting the dog’s attention can sometimes be achieved by holding a squeaking toy in one hand and triggering the camera with the other. Feel free to get the owner involved, and make it fun. Another option is to add a Look Lock System to your camera’s hotshoe, and place a phone in the cradle and play a video of dogs barking and playing, bacon cooking, whatever may get the pups attention. The Look Lock was originally created for children photographers, but we’ve heard from pet photographers who’ve used the Look Lock in the same way with great success.

Compact Photo Booth Kit

If you’re setting up a photo booth at an animal shelter, farmer’s market, or other outdoor event – lugging heavy gear isn’t appealing. The Tether Tools Rock Solid PhotoBooth Kit for Stands and Tripods is a photo booth kit that’s designed for use with tripods, sets up quick, and is easy to transport. The kit comes with the gear you’ll need to mount a monitor or TV to the tripod, and to attach an arm to the tripod center column to place your camera.

Printing On-Site

This setup requires a tethered connection in order to get the images over to a printer for quick on-site printing. Once your photo booth kit is setup, run a TetherPro USB cable from your camera to a nearby laptop, and then setup a printer to print images on site. Take a few pictures, select the best one, crop and apply a quick preset edit as needed and send to the printer. As an alternative, you can also drive future business by posting each image on your social media page, or drive adoptions and awareness by posting the images on the social media accounts for the participating animal shelter or local pet store.

Photo Booth Software

On this blog we recently covered two recommended options for photo booth software that both include features like built-in social media sharing, printing, background templates, and more. Read that article here: What Software is Best for a Photo Booth Setup?