Friday, July 6, 2012

Sadie says, "Mmmm..."

In the late afternoon I was standing just outside the back door of the house when Sadie walked up and paused at the door. I was thinking she would either: (1) join me outside, or (2) stand her ground at the threshold as I held the door open waiting for her to pass through. She chose (2).

So as she stood there I thought, "Hey...I like the way she looks while standing against the dark interior of the house. Maybe I can get a shot or two of this." I went inside to get my camera (Sadie twisted her head around to see what I was doing), grabbed a handful of dog kibble, then stepped back outside and got her attention by talking to her and handing her food.

I had a different picture in mind when I started this exercise, but Sadie would not open her eyes wide enough. Instead, I tried to get her actually doing something, instead of my usual staring-back-at-the-camera shot:

Sadie

I played around with this in Lightroom; I tried different black-and-white treatments but none seemed quite right. I left the picture in color and just removed most of the color from her red tag bag, and added some sharpening around her eyes. Then i added a vignette to isolate her face further.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/2.8; camera chose shutter speed of 1/800 second at ISO 400; center-weighted metered; -0.7 exposure compensation; auto white balance; normal JPG.)

14 comments:

  1. Oh, I love that! At first I thought it was black and white until I saw the color on the floor under her. I think it's a great shot!

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    1. i thought about trying to completely paint out the floor below but when i did it just looked bad. i figured a vignette would be good enough. her tag bag's original color was distracting to me, though.

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  2. Nice picture. I like how the pink tongue stands out.

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    1. i was surprised at how the camera rendered her tongue. granted, i have it set to use the "vivid" picture control to saturate the colors more than the default. but adjusting the color balance also played a part.

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  3. Lol, that's definitely not too salty! I thought it was colour popped to start with. What a pretty coloured tongue Sadie has:)

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    1. i figured giving her kibble was less messy than handing her a bowl of ice cream or yogurt.

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  4. Cool shot and post-processing. I really need to learn how to use more of Lightroom.

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    1. i have a long ways to go before i'm any good at it.

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  5. What a great shot! I love what you did with the color.

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    1. i'm always looking for ways to show her gray face. the pink of her tongue surprised me.

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  6. Nice shot and great finish. Have a lovely Saturday.
    Best wishes Molly

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    1. thank you, molly. i hope you had a great weekend.

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  7. What a great shot! Love this one!

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    1. thanks! when are you going to another retirement day?

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