As some of you know, Kyla had a bad experience a while ago with neighborhood dog that had gotten loose. It was extremely scary, and I didn’t know any of these little tricks at the time. So when I saw this post today, I knew I had to share it with everyone.
I need more practice shooting in the direct sunlight – Kyla was only happy to oblige.
She is a sun worshipper.
In front of Kyla (and behind me) is our house with white french doors and a light colored umbrella on the patio.
The sun bounced off the doors and umbrella to help illuminate Kyla, but I also used the on-camera flash as a fill.
Post-processing included warming up the image a little and some increasing of blacks, contrast and sharpening.
Kyla and I were playing with the new camera one afternoon. I just set it on continuous focus, burst firing, held out the camera, pushed the button and held it there for several minutes. If you have those settings on your camera I highly recommend doing this. When you scroll through the images, it ends up looking like a movie. Very cool.
These are some of the keepers we got, I thought they looked cute in a filmstrip look.
Just some different processing for this set of Kyla and Abby shots.
[ ISO 800 (it was dark!); 50mm prime @ 1.4 and sloooow shutter! ]
[ Processing: bumped up exposure, bumped up blacks and contrast a little, took down the saturation, fiddled with the temp and tint to my vintage liking, dark and wide vignette ]
[ Ok so no one has guessed yet, this was at the bottom so maybe no one saw it:
This beautiful girl has the same name as a popular rock band. Any guesses? ]
This sweet girl brought an opportunity to combine my two worlds of dog photography and vet tech training. She was a little shy and wasn’t sure about being near me and my camera at first.
Here’s a little tip for helping shy dogs come out of their shell a little for the camera: If you can sit down on her level, not facing toward her but to the side, hold out or even throw treats in her direction, she may warm up to you. I did this for several minutes before I even brought out my camera.
This isn’t always the case of course, but it’s a great way to start. It worked wonders at this session.
A massage doesn’t hurt, either.
Love her spotted belly.
This is Kyla trying out the new hall rug. Guess she approves.
Yes, this photo is grainy. I don’t mind it.
When you have low light this is what you get. But somehow in certain black and whites I think it looks good. Has a film-quality to it. Kind of scratchy and old-looking.
You can really set a mood with your grain. Try it!
Fellow photogs: Have you ever wondered if your images end up downloaded and pasted on someone else’s Web site? Now you can search the Web for your image.
Reading my Photoshop User magazine today, I found a cool new search engine that uses your image, not text, to search the Web for copies of it online.
That’s right. It uses an uploaded image as a template to go out and search for other copies. How cool is that? It’s called TinEye.com and it’s free. Check it out!
It’s 6pm. Time for dinner.
Hurry up, mom.
Seriously. Put the camera down and scoop up me some grub.
After this shot was taken a long thin line of drool formed from her mouth to the floor. I’ve spared you that moment, mostly because I couldn’t get a good shot of it. She was just too hungry to stay in one place.
Side note: Kyla and I just got back from our daily walk, and we were negatively approached for the third or fourth time by a couple of neighborhood dogs. Luckily I had my vinegar spray. I highly suggest you take some with you when walking your dogs if you don’t already. I’ve never felt quite so helpless when a large, or even a smaller dog is barking and biting in my dog’s face. There really is nothing you can do to stop it short of getting hurt yourself.
And to the careless neighbors who leave their dogs unattended and free to roam the street, please think of others and close your gate, leash your dogs, and don’t let them run around free.
Even if they are the greatest dogs in the world around you and even other people. You never know what the wolf inside will do in a given situation.
Black & Whites look great in black & white.
Yep, more Kyla images, but I tried some more blind shooting like I mentioned earlier.
Previous post about blind shooting. Another previous post.
Also tried some different post processing for a different tone. I think I need to try that more often. I like how these turned out.
