For us, our dog is only a part of our life, but for the dog, we are its whole life. Love your dog, dude.
Planning
Plan a theme for your photography. In my case, the occasion was perfect to play catch ball with Stanley. The weather was clear, and Stanley's favorite toy was his very own tennis ball. Guess what, he runs faster than the ball. Super cute, huh? Alright, get back to photography.
Camera Setting
As I mentioned above, Stanley moves really fast. His running speed is just crazy. I had to set my shutter speed max if I wanted to capture the snapshot perfectly. One thing you need to consider before setting high shutter speed: your ISO will increase to compensate the light requirement for a perfect picture. Too much ISO will cause noise. My suggestion is to balance the shutter speed and use as low ISO as you can.
Angle
Angle plays an important role in photography. Low angle photos are great in giving a stronger impression to the objects. In case of Stanley, you can see that I took most of the shots from a low angle, or at least at the same level as his eyes. I was laying down with my camera and seeing him running towards me through the lens. This created great pictures.
Modelling
I wish I spoke Bark. I couldn't just ask Stanley to sit like one of Leonardo DiCaprio's one of the French girls so that I could take his photos. Animal photographers use proper plannings to solve this. Stanley looks so adorable when he runs with his ball, so that's exactly what I did. For great white shark photo hunters, they use imitation prey which resembles seal and wait for the predator to strike from beneath the water surface.
Basic Rules
This is the part which you can play and explore. Remember the Rule of Thirds? Composition? While photography has its basic rules, what matters is your expression. So deep, huh?
The rest is just experience and playing with your gears. Have fun!
If you can have that in your life, things won't be too bad - Robert Wagner
A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself - Josh Billings