I was just going to get some casual shots of the BCs lying in the sun, when I noticed a trend. Here’s the first photo:
Followed by the next two:
Can’t miss it, can you? No matter what I did, clicking or smooching or waving my fingers, Maggie would not look at the camera lens. And no wonder. Here I was, down on my knees at eye level, with this huge, round, black eye staring straight at her. She’s much softer than Willie, and easily intimidated, and that flat, black eye-like shape was just too much for her.
I’ve seen this repeatedly over the years, and always assumed it related to dogs perceiving camera lenses as the black, dilated pupils of another animal. Dilated pupils are signs of arousal, and we all know that direct stares can be intimidating. Dogs don’t have to believe that a camera lens is really the eye of another dog, any more than we believe that a smiley face is a person–and yet still react to it with a smile of our own.
Responses to “false eyes” have interested ethologists for decades. Eye spots are seen on a large range of animals, from frogs like the one below to butterflies and caterpillars. FYI, the BBC has a great article on what we know, and don’t know, about the function of eye spots.
Of course, we’ll never really know how dogs perceive the big, black lenses on cameras, but keep in mind that many dogs dislike looking directly into a camera lens. It’s actually not a bad evaluation tool of a dog’s personality. Notice how Willie was perfectly happy to stare straight into the lens in every photo, while Maggie, little Miss OhGodPleaseDon’tRaiseYourVoiceEvenIfYouAreHappy Dog, couldn’t bring herself to look straight ahead. Keep that in mind when you are taking photographs–I’ve found a lot of dog lovers don’t, and get more and more frustrated while their dog gets more and more intimidated during a photo shoot. (This seems especially relevant during the holidays, when so many of us want to take family pictures, dog included, of course.)
What about your dog? Oblivious to lenses like Willie, or lens aversive like Maggie?
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Can you hear our huge sigh of relief? After seven months, our major remodeling and landscaping projects are now, finally, officially done. No more massive, noisy trucks in the yard, no more obsessing over keeping the dogs safe, no more noise and dust and mud in all the wrong places. And the flower gardens, both old and new, are almost ready to put to bed. I took some photos this morning of the last of the fall color. I’m soaking up all the color I can before the grey-brown of November begins.
Our transplanted geraniums are thriving!
These asters are the last flowers blooming. Bless them.
I can’t imagine how we managed without 4-wheeler George all these years. Unless the weather turns, I’ll have all the flower gardens weeded and mulched by the weekend. Wheeeee!
All Things Collie says
They now make attachments for your cameras, that hold a tennis ball or a treat, so even the shyest of dogs will pose for pics. 🙂
I’ve never had this problem, as I live with a bunch of hams, who can’t wait to pose! Lol
Nicole says
Not only is my dog camera shy, she’s phone camera shy. I can be holding my phone as if I’m taking a photo or video toward her and she doesn’t respond, but when I actually have the camera app open she runs away. She must hear something I can’t because I have the camera itself on silent so there aren’t any clicks that are audible to me.
Debby Gray says
I think this is related to the topic. I dont know yet about camera lenses but from my experience these last two days I dont expect a problem
Because Monty is so very sound sensitive and skittish about all sorts of sounds, I wonderd how he would do when I came home yesterday afternoon wearing huge clunky sunglasses and under the glasses, an eye patch.
He was was not the least bit concerned and greeted me as he always does when I’ve been away for any length of time. He may have sniffed my hands a little more and later sniffed around my eye patch ( the result of cataract sugery) but he did not seemed bothered by the change in me that included the apparent development of huge black eyes.
Alice R. says
My Arlo doesn’t like the camera either although he has become better about it over time. He used to look like “I didn’t do anything wrong, why would you point that thing at me?” in spite of the fact that it’s just a phone and we never do fussing or punishment. Now, he just looks annoyed and seems to have gone to “you’re annoying” with a look of disgust. How’s that for anthropomorphic nonsense?
Glad your project is done. Ours is too, and there’s nothing like that relief, but we will have mud all winter, and now need to locate a well concealed leak that enclosing a porch revealed. Every project is connected to another one, isn’t it?
Trisha says
Treat wouldn’t do it for Maggie, nor would a sheep held over my head!
Bruce says
Lovely asters Trisha!
Pug and Red Dog are completely unfazed by the camera. Not terribly interested in getting their picture taken, mind you – I usually need to hold up a treat or make squeaky noises to get them to look – but unfazed.
Sammy needs encouragement to look at the camera. When she does, I need to snap fast because she looks away quickly.
Longer lenses provide more distance, which makes the camera less intimidating for the dogs. My go-to lens for dog pictures is a 70-200mm f/4, which is also fast enough to capture dogs running straight at the camera. We get some lovely pictures by calling the dogs back and forth while machine-gunning pictures. This usually yields lots of rejects and a decent number of keepers.
It is easy to get running dog pictures with the Sammy because the focus system readily locks onto her dark eyes contrasted against biscuit-colored fur. Red Dog is more of a challenge because she runs really fast and her face and eyes are low contrast brown on brown. Consequently the focus system often grabs her collar or the white splash on her chest, leaving her eyes slightly out of focus.
Good light and shutter speeds of 1/1,000 second or faster help, too. As you can imagine I have way too many dog pictures!
Chris Wells says
My Golden Retriever rescue, Molly, looks like she is being punished when I try to take her picture. She can be smiling up a storm and I whip out my phone and her face goes to “please don’t beat me”. I have managed to sneak a few pictures of her, but not face on! I thought it was a “rescue issue”! On the flip side, my lovely Arabian gelding I had for 25 years LOVED to have his picture taken. I swear he posed! If he saw me with a camera he always came racing over!
Terry Golson says
Brilliant observation, and it applies to horses, too. I take photos with an iPhone, so don’t have that big circle, but it is a big, black object. I’d like to see research – what shape illicits that response? Also, my body language changes! I stand still and stare hard, I might crouch in an unusual way. I’m currently working with an elderly pony who hasn’t been caught in 2 years. I’ve been documenting the progress with my iPhone, but I’ll try putting it away in the next session. Thank you for making me more aware of this.
Debbie Fishbain says
We just thought all of or rescues who were adverse to having their picture taken were in the witness protection program.
amy says
I thought my dog was camera shy, but he also had a terrible phobia of thunder storms – particularly of lightening. Once I started taking pictures with my Smartphone with the flash off, he was far more likely to allow me to take a picture.
CarrieV says
A nice piece of chicken will usually get my camera-hating dog’s attention long enough to get a good shot, if I work fast. It does need to be held a little away from the camera, above or to the side, to switch his focus.
Have you tried holding a sheep over your head? It might actually work, lol.
soyoung says
@debbie! hahahaha!! 🤔
my pup paco is like an spoiled, entitled starlet- he gets visibly and audibly annoyed when i pull out the camera or iphone to take his picture…usually he will sigh dramatically or huff, then resigns himself to getting his picture taken, as if he knows it’s part of the job but he’s not thrilled at all to be doing it. like, “ok paparazzi, let’s just get this over with!” i know what he’s thinking: put down the camera and let’s get on with our hike/activity/ feeding/ treat giving/etc.
in more pictures than i can count, you can see how peevish he’s feeling in his ears (flattened back) and eyes (not a hard eye but not a soft eye, either!) but i love taking pictures and videos of him and having them printed out because i think he is so beautiful and sweet, and i love seeing older photos of the adventures we have taken together!
Steven says
I’m a pet photographer and I deal with this all the time. I’ve learned to not force the dog to look, but instead compose my photo using the dogs look away. And then be quick before they look away again. LOL
Interestingly, my husky doesn’t mind my camera with the big lens being pointed at her, but if I use my iPhone she turns away 😊
Pam Riek says
Our Border Collie didn’t care. Sometimes he actually seemed to be hamming it up. Our senior rescue Rough Collie went through a phase where he’d get up and walk out of the room if anyone tried to take his picture with a camera or phone. This was after we’d had him for a few years too. Eventually he went back to not caring. 🤔
Susan Sanders says
A photograher had taken many pictures of my dog in the ring at events before the day she tried to do so from a step-stool, that huge black eye looming higher & higher. Brodie froze, planted, & barked at her until she left. After the event she & I worked with him until he was comfortable with her & would take treats from her. For months she treated him & let him sniff her big camera at events, & he greeted her happily & even let her photograph him elsewhere with a smaller lense. After over a year of this we decided to try again. Brodie reacted to her scent before he could see her, & when she appeared, before she raised her camera, he froze & barked at her. It was situational now. It wasn’t just the photographer or the camera itself, it was the possibility that she might present that huge eye when he was in the ring, where it had so terrified him before.
Kathy L. says
Funny this blog should come up today. I have an 8 week old female black Labrador Retriever. She was sitting on the top of her baby slide before going down. I went to take a picture of her and wanted to get closer so I could actually see her face (black dog photo problem), and she barked! It was her first bark and it was shrill! I took it to mean she wasn’t too happy about the camera being closer to her and she wanted to let me know!
Melanie Hawkes says
My last dog Happy LOVED cheese. Any time we wanted him in a photo we would say “Cheese” and he would sit and wait in anticipation of his favourite food. There is also a camera app for dogs called Petcam that plays sounds to get your dog’s attention to take photos of your dog.
Trisha says
Ha! Not sure I could lift one that high.
Trisha says
Great point Amy.
Trisha says
Thanks for the laugh!
Trisha says
Good point about the posture too. And your question about shape makes me think of all that great historic ethological research by Jack Hailman on gull chick responses to the red spot on their parent’s bill. He (a la Tinbergen) changed size, shape, etc. By the way, Tinbergen is the one who coined the phrase “Supernormal Sign Stimuli” by changing the size and shape of eggs. The larger the egg, the more intense the parental response to bring it back into the nest.
Trisha says
Great points about the difference in lenses. I too often use my longer lens when taking animal photos, just had the shorter one out to take flower pictures. And I never thought about how easy it would be for a camera to focus on the contrast of dark eye/light fur when in “athletic” mode. No such luck with BCs, but great point!
Trisha says
Argh, the endless process. Glad yours is done too, but I hear you re the mud. Yup, got that too. Good luck with the leak. We too had a challenging discovery (Oh really, there’s no foundation underneath the dining room?), good luck with it!
Trisha says
That is so interesting! I wonder if other dogs have reacted to eye patches? They certainly do to sunglasses. (If I had $100 for every time I said “Jim, take your sunglasses off” when meeting a new dog, I’d be wealthy.)
Trisha says
Ah, but that doesn’t take away from the scary black eye-lens, just gets the dog to look directly at the camera. Maggie would not be impressed!
Barb Stanek says
Glad your remodel is done.
I agree about the camera! Fortunately, most of my dogs have adapted to the lens. My current boy doesn’t mind lenses. But he abhors my straight-on eye contact when I’m professing my undying love for him. I have to look at his nose, not into his lovely brown eyes!
Monika & Sam says
Sam is invariably phone camera shy. I know better than to try the DSLR. On the bright side though…he has a nice profile. 🎃
Agnieszka says
Well, the very best way – if possible – is to work with two people, when one person works on focusing a dog and another just takes pictures. Bazyl is not camera-shy, but is also not very happy about big black lenses close to his face; nothing a small treat wouldn’t help with, though.
Beautiful flowers!
Can’t stop giggling about sheep-supported photo-shoots. I’m sure Bazyl approves.
KKB says
Man, that frog butt is something else. Vivian does not like posing for photos, but I pay her well to do it. Sometimes that works and sometimes she says, “Not even chicken hearts are going to get me to sit still and look cute right now, mom.”
Jann Becker says
So the 4-wheeler wondered why it had never had its picture in the blog, since the dogs were in it all the time, and she works so hard…
My dogs aren’t camera-shy, they’re more likely so stop being cute and come stick their faces in the camera, like “Why are you pointing that at me?”
Love the “rescues in witness protection” idea!
Jenny Haskins says
Only one of my dogs is bad with cameras 🙁 In EVERY photo of her she is looking terribly stressed and frightened, with her ears plastered to her head making her look like the woman in “The Scream”. Yet immediately before and afterwards she is looking happy and relaxed 🙁 (I’d post a photo of I could 🙂
Mireille Wulf says
Shad doesn’t like his picture taken, but it doesn’t matter if I use the camera or my phone, which does not have a big lens. Also, he is not a dog easily intimidated. I feel with him it is a kind of exasperation; he looks at me to start a conversation (he als a stare that speaks volumes) but then I refuse to engage and focus on a camera. He sighs and flops down with his back towards me sometimes ….
Mireille Wulf says
I guess this picture sums up Shad’s meaning about pics being taken https://instagram.com/p/BZ3tbdflV-u/
JMM says
My greyhound is camera shy. No amount of lures or funny noises or treats will make her look.
She is a very sensitive and observant girl. I had a bad migraine and was laying on the couch with an eyemask on. She kept coming over to poke me with her snoot, which she’s never done before or since.
Dorte Nielsen says
Try to use the camera in your smartphone, and see what happens. It doesn’t have a glaring eye … at least only a very discreet one.
All the best
Dorte in Denmark
Nancy says
Our BC’s could not care less about phone pictures (I don’t have a camera, so I don’t know what they’d do then). They just want to play fetch. For hours and hours and…
Eric@petsourceusa.com says
I tried to take a selfie with my Coonhound the other night. No matter what I did, he wouldn’t look at the camera. It’s almost like he knows what I am trying to do. And just doesn’t want to cooperate.
Anne Ramey says
And then there are the Labradoodles – mine is a mini, 24 lbs of pure princess – who tend to being both friendly and stubborn, and so eager for attention that one only gets pictures of the top of their back end and tail as they rush toward you as soon as the camera is lifted up and you look at them . . . The only pics of my girl that turn out well are the ones where she is sleeping. So when I show them to people they think she is an extremely sedentary and mellow dog. If only . . .
lin says
When Mr. B first came to us he was very intimidated by the small digital camera lens and would turn his head and slink away. He quickly learned about treats, but would never look at the camera. My lightbulb moment came when someone at the dog park took out their phone to take a picture of him sitting and looking up. He stared up at the phone, waiting patiently. At that time I had no smartphone, but I did acquire an iTouch with a camera. He learned to associate the iTouch with treats, and had no problems with it or my subsequent phone.
Now all of his pictures are with my smartphone, I should pull out the camera and see what he thinks.
Melanie Varey says
This is so interesting! 😲 thank you 😊
Judy Rivard says
If you have an iPhone, try the BarkCam app. It has a choice of 15 different sounds. I like the squeaky toy sound. It plays the sound, the dog looks, and it snaps the photo. I use it to get graduation photos in my Obedience classes.
Donna says
I realize I am late to reading & posting to this trend, but wanted to offer my thoughts on the ‘big scary black camera lens’ – my rescue Spencer was also very uneasy for the longest while when I tried to get a photo. In addition to the other comments posted, I think it also has to do with the fact that they can’t see OUR faces or eyes once the dreaded camera eye appears. I’m not an owner of a smart phone, so using that is not an option- but I did gradually let him explore the camera ( a desensitization process perhaps) and would hold it away from my face while pretending to take a picture- after a few months, which felt like an eternity! I have been able to get him in full face view now. Just a thought!
J Burrill says
Hi Patricia, I have been lurking around your blog for some time, and I guess I want to make the first comment here. Yep, you are not the only one, my dog hate camera too! They show some signal like appears to be a big eye staring at them. Yawning, lip licking and of course the head-turning behaviour. If you take a photo quietly with the smartphone camera (silent mode) it’s all seem fine, but not with the DLSR camera or the big one like the zooming and panning can make some noises then the final flash. A scary object to them lol. But I think it is quite okay if you introduced the dog with the camera since a young age.
Lucille White says
I guess our dogs are natural- born divas. Possum, my Malti-Pom, recently deceased, ( what a hole a 10lb. Sweetie can leave in their family’ hearts and lives!) Was a photo natural from 8 weeks on. My granddog, Jackson, a flat coat retriever mix, poses as if his future in movies depends on each shot! ( No witness protection for him), my gorgeous Pyr, Riley, another rescue, is very camera friendly and always has been, his first mom was good enough to send me baby pictures, so he happily poses regularly! No treats needed for any of them. Sorry about your leak and foundation problems respectively. Life seems to be one repair job after another, but country living is like that. Congrats on the wheeler, they sure are convenient aren’t they? I prefer snow to mud, though we usually have ample amounts of each every Winter. Our first snow came before Thanksgiving, but so did the first vehicle stuck in mud as well. It promises to be an interesting year ahead weather- wise.
md jahangir alam says
Many thanks.
This article is for like wildlife photography and I like it most.