Sunday, December 25, 2011

Loud noises...do not want.

Sadie is not particularly fond of loud conversations. When she hears them she usually thinks she's being scolded for something she did -- even though we're not talking to her -- and oftentimes runs up to us smiling. Then we tell her she's not in trouble and she feels better.

As we were busy preparing food and cleaning the house for our Christmas visitors we'd sometimes find ourselves talking to each other with a room separating us. Not liking the volume of the conversations Sadie disappeared into our bedroom, followed some time later by Katie.

When I realized that they had both made themselves scarce I went into our bedroom and was greeted by this:

Katie and Sadie 

They were just going to hunker down until things settled. I could tell that Sadie was more uncomfortable (not surprisingly) with the noise than Katie was, although it did bother Katie to a degree. It was just a little unusual seeing them lying so close together that they actually touched.

I had to get a picture.

So, kneeling down on the floor and pressing my back against our dresser I took a couple of center-weighted snaps of Sadie as she looked at me:

Sadie 

I vacillated between cropping closely to discard extraneous stuff and not cropping at all to give a sense of context of Sadie's surroundings. I settled for cropping closely, but am not yet convinced that was the "right" thing to do. But, on the other hand, I am happy to see how the detail in her graying face and paws came out (it is all too easy to overexpose the white hair and lose what few black hairs remain). I added a bit of sharpening, dodged her eyes to make them stand out more, and added a vignette.

I really love photographing Sadie, but I know I could do a better job of it.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm lens; top photo: spot-metered; aperture-priority; aperture set to f/8, camera chose shutter speed of 1/30 second at ISO 900; bottom photo: center-weighted; aperture-priority; aperture set to f/2.8, camera chose shutter speed of 1/30 second at ISO 450; +0.7 exposure compensation; both photos used auto white balance; normal JPG.)

8 comments:

  1. Now that my guys are getting older, I run into the issue of overexposing their faces. I'm used to seeing my guys literally lay on top of each other, but I love to see the ones that normally don't do that. So sweet.

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  2. I think you make her look fabulous! Both girls look so sweet there together on the bed. I happen to like the cropping to draw attention to her, too. But then again, I didn't see her uncropped! :P

    I got Lightroom for Christmas. I want to delete a bunch of things off the computer before I install it, and then I'll have to figure out how to use it.

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  3. What a sweet photo of these two girls settling down for a long winter's nap!

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  4. Beautiful photos of the girls! It's not often that our guys will actually touch each other either so when it does happen, I try to sneak off to get the camera too!

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  5. Our Booyah does not like loud conversations or curse words. He runs upstairs. Our Maggie is scared of all loud noises and proudly wears her thundershirt to help with anxiety. :) Great photos!

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  6. sadie is very sensitive. i have not gotten a picture of her smiling yet. i hope to do so. she's the only one of the four greyhounds that we've adopted that smiles.

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