Your Dog's Photo on a Skateboard Deck: How to Get It Right

The photo of your dog that works on a skateboard deck is vertical, or crops well to vertical, taken at the dog's eye level, in soft light, against a plain background, with the eyes sharp. If the coat is very black or very white, tap the screen on the dog and adjust the brightness before you take the shot. Everything else (the name, a collage of three photos, or the photo spread across two decks) you put together in the editor. This guide is for anyone who wants their dog on the wall, or wants to give one to someone who loves theirs as much as you love yours: which photo to choose, how to take one if you don't have it yet, three ways to lay it out and where to hang it. If a cat runs your house, it works just the same; the little that changes is at the end.

Which photo of your dog works on a deck

A deck is 20 to 22 cm wide and much longer than it is wide. Almost no photo has that shape, so what matters is the subject, not how good the camera is. With dogs, these work:

• Sitting and facing you. A sitting dog is already a tall shape: it fits the deck without painful crops, head at the top and paws at the bottom.
• A close-up of the face. Eyes, nose and ears at deck size are striking, and it's the photo that best holds a plain colour background around it.
• Lying down, stretched out. It works if you rotate the photo and hang the deck horizontally; with a dachshund, the shape tells the joke by itself (more ideas like that in skateboard design ideas).
• With the look that's so them. The folded ear, the tongue out, the head tilt when you talk to them. A technically perfect photo that doesn't look like your dog is worth less than an ordinary one that does.

What doesn't work: a small dog in the middle of a landscape (printed, it ends up as a blob), the wide shot of them running on the beach if you want all of it, and screenshots or photos forwarded on WhatsApp, which usually arrive compressed. What happens with each kind of photo, with numbers, in which photos look good printed on a skateboard deck.

How to take the photo, if you don't have it yet

If none of the ones you have convinces you, take one with the deck in mind. Camera makers and phone makers give much the same advice:

• Soft light. In the shade on a bright day, or indoors by a window without direct sun. Midday sun casts hard shadows and burns out a light coat; and on a grey Irish afternoon, a big window is your best friend. No flash, which can spook them.
• At their level. Canon and Google give the same advice: get down to their eye line. From above, the way we always see them, they come out all head with the floor behind; at their level, they come out as themselves. With a small dog, lie down, or hold the phone upside down so the lens sits lower.
• A plain background, well behind them. A wall, a door or the grass, with nothing growing out of their head. If you use portrait mode, Google recommends putting more distance between the dog and the background so it blurs more; afterwards, zoom in and check the outline of the fur came out clean.
• Sharp eyes. Tap the screen on their eyes to focus there (on the eye nearest the camera, if you're using a camera). If they move, use burst mode and pick the good one afterwards.
• Looking at you. Have someone hold a treat or make a noise right above the phone. And a tired dog after a walk beats one that's just woken up.
• No digital zoom. Move closer instead of pinching to zoom: digital zoom crops away pixels you'll miss on the deck. If your phone has a telephoto lens, that one is fine.
• Vertical, with room to spare. Leave space above the ears and below the paws: in the editor you crop it to the shape of the deck, and if the photo is tight there's nothing left to crop.

Black coat, white coat

This is what goes wrong most often, and there's a reason for it. On automatic, the camera meters the scene and exposes it to come out as a mid grey. With a black dog filling most of the frame, it brightens everything: the coat comes out greyish and flat, and the background blown out. With a white dog it does the opposite: it darkens it and you get a dirty white.

• Black dog. Tap the screen on the dog and pull the brightness down a little with the slider that appears beside it, until black is black again and you can see the fur. Pet photographers talk about underexposing by a stop or two when black dominates the frame. And light from the side: light that skims across the coat draws the fur, light from the front flattens it.
• White dog. The reverse: raise the brightness a little until white is white, but check you're not losing the detail in the fur. In the shade, never in full sun.
• Black and white, or brindle. Expose for the part you care about most, which is nearly always the face, and look for soft light, which spreads best across both.

On the deck, contrast counts too: a black dog gets lost on a dark background. If you cut the photo out and the rest of the deck is a flat colour, pick a light colour behind a dark dog and a strong one behind a white dog.

Phone or camera

A phone is enough, as long as you upload the original file: the one in your camera roll or your cloud backup, not the one that reached you through a messaging app. Resolution does set a limit. Below 150 ppi at the size you place it, the print comes out soft or pixelated, and the editor doesn't warn you. An ordinary phone photo is plenty for the dog's face in the middle of the deck and falls short if you stretch it from nose to tail; how to work it out for your photo is in the photo guide. If you have a camera, a large JPG or a processed RAW is better, but there's no need to buy one for this.

Portrait, name or collage: three ways to lay it out

A portrait

The face in the middle third of the deck, between the two groups of truck holes: the nose and tail curve up, so anything on them looks foreshortened, and the eight holes go through whatever you put over them. If the photo isn't big enough to cover the deck, don't stretch it: leave it at the size it can take and choose a deck colour that suits it all around. If you want it in black and white, convert it on your phone before uploading.

With their name

The name in big letters, under the photo or along the deck, and a date if you like: the day they came home, or “since” and the year. You can try lettering styles on the personalised name deck page, or type it straight into the editor and rotate it. Their name or nickname, the one you actually call them, not the one on their pedigree papers.

A collage of three photos

As a puppy, as a youngster and now; or the dog in three places they love. In the photo collage you choose three photos and see them at once in several layouts (instant photos, photo booth, film strip, comic…), with an optional caption. You keep one, it opens in the editor exactly as it is, and from there you move things around or order it. The collage warns you if a photo is too small for the layout.

One dog, two decks

One image can be spread across several decks that hang together: in the editor's “…” menu, at the bottom left, you choose from 2 to 10 decks and they appear side by side, with the gap they'll have on the wall. For a dog, two decks give you plenty to play with:

• The dog on one and the name on the other, with the same background running from one to the next, like a diptych.
• A long dog, lying across both, with the body crossing the gap and the whole head inside one deck.

Whatever falls in the gap isn't printed, and when you hang them they can end up very slightly out of line: never leave the face split down the middle. It's one design and one order, and each deck costs the same as a single one, so two are 178 €. How it works in more detail, in one photo split across two decks.

And if it's a cat?

Everything above works for a cat, with three nuances. Cats usually pose better when they choose the spot, so wait for them by the window where they sunbathe, phone ready, instead of carrying them there. Whiskers are fine detail and need a sharp, large photo, without aggressive crops. And their most typical pose, lying down and stretched out, is the one for a horizontal deck: rotate the photo in the editor and hang the deck on its side. A black cat has the same problem as a black dog, with the same fix: tap on it and lower the brightness.

Where to hang it

Hang it with the printed side facing out, which is the underside of the deck: the side nobody stands on. The three ways to hang it (a wall mount, two screws through the truck holes with a spacer, or an adhesive mount) are in how to hang a skateboard on the wall; we don't sell the mount ourselves. A few spots:

• Vertically, in the hall, next to the hook for the lead, or on a landing where a frame wouldn't fit.
• Horizontally, above the sofa they're not allowed on.
• At people's eye level, not theirs: a happy tail sweeps everything within reach.
• Away from direct sun from a big window, which over time fades the colours of any print.

For the wall you don't need griptape or any add-on: it's a real maple skateboard deck, and without griptape the top side stays bare wood.

If it's a gift

If the dog isn't yours, the hard part is getting the photo without spoiling the surprise. Ask someone in their house who can send you the original file. Photos saved from social media are usually recompressed, and on top of that they aren't yours: if a photographer took it, you need their permission, because under Irish copyright law the author of a photo is its first owner (what you can and can't print is covered in where to get artwork for a custom deck). If there are people in the photo, make sure they're happy with it.

Each deck is 89 €. Shipping is charged once per order: 20 € to Ireland, from 15 € to the rest of the EU depending on the country, and free within Spain. We don't give a delivery date for orders outside Spain, so if there's a birthday or an anniversary involved, order with plenty of time to spare, and remember we don't ship to Northern Ireland or anywhere else in the UK. For more gift ideas there's gifts for skateboarders, and for deciding between a deck and something else, custom skateboard gift ideas.

And if you want one for each person in the family, all with the same design, that's a single order of several copies, from 1 to 19, arriving together at one address.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Soft natural light and no flash, focusing on the eye nearest the camera, and shooting at eye level: Canon Europe, pet photography tips. Shooting at their eye line, the phone upside down, separating the pet from the background in portrait mode, and burst shots: Google, pet photography tips for Pixel (2023). Underexposing a stop or two with black dogs: Five Freedoms Photography, tips for photographing black dogs (2023). The author as first owner of copyright: Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, section 23. All consulted in October 2026.