I wanted to do this shot with this English Bulldog puppy in a basket, but she was too big for the basket I had so I went with what I could find – boxes and a sheet. Fortunately, she is pretty calm so setting her higher up wasn’t a big risk as she didn’t really move at all. She just pretty much sat there and looked confused which is all I needed for this session.
You also want to test before you do anything with pets to see if the flash scares them. If it does you might want to rethink how you approach your photo session. If this puppy was scared of the strobes, then I likely would of switched to an outdoor session and certainly would have dropped the height of the setup. As always, when working with animals be patient and nice. They don’t know what you are trying to do and they just want you to be happy. But since they don’t know what you are trying to do they don’t know how to make you happy in this scenario so give them a break and stay calm and nice.
As for the lighting setup, I used two lights. Once again, a strobe overhead but this time with a snoot aimed at the subject. My key light was an octagon softbox just in front of me aimed at the subject. I kept light low and made ample use of black to further reduce light.