Monday, May 6, 2013

Fun with treats

During one photoshoot that I did during the Greyhounds in Gettysburg event (held at the end of last month) I had three Greyhounds jumping for treats at their owner's suggestion. This was to try and get some action shots of them. (Speaking of which: our two girls rarely jump for treats, and I would venture to say that a fair number of Greyhounds don't either. In fact our first Greyhound, Alex, would just follow the trajectory, from hand to ground, of any treat tossed to him. You could even bounce a dog cookie off his head and he would still not jump for it. This causes some people to think that Greyhounds are not particularly bright.)

Having not tried capturing this sort of action before, I went with shutter-priority and picked a shutter speed of 1/500 second to start with and adjusted accordingly.

Here are the contestants -- Tanzanite ("Tanzi" for short):


Opal:

Opal

Emerald:


We took the dogs individually and their owner tossed a cookie in the air while I tried to anticipate where the dogs were going to be when they jumped and caught it. In hindsight I would've made my job easier, I think, if I took a series of shots of each attempt. Instead, I took one shot per attempt, and taking it before the dog snapped at the treat.

Naturally there were a lot of misfires:





But then there are the succesful shots. Opal:


Emerald:



Tanzanite:


I learned that I need more practice. Now, if only our girls would cooperate...

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 50mm f/1.8 AF-D lens; shutter-priority mode with shutter speeds set at 1/500 or 1/1000 second; aperture varied from f/2 to f/4; ISO varied from 100 to 800; center-weighted metering; auto white balance; normal JPG; post-processed in Lightroom.)







12 comments:

  1. AWESOME. (And what is it with greyhounds catching treats? I can hit mine in the head 8 times in a row with a cookie and they still don't get the point of the game!!! ;)

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    1. when a greyhound gets hit on the head with a treat and not reacting, i can easily imagine that getting turned into a cartoon.

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  2. Yay for Beryl, I've taught her to catch treats and she's pretty darn good at it too:) She mostly gets them from a sit or standing, can't say I've even noticed if she jumps for them when she's standing! These are great shots, love the bloopers too, lol!

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    1. i previewed after every shot to see what i needed to do for the next one. my problem is i'm too slow releasing the shutter. another problem is i don't track fast enough. i think that one misfire picture of tanzi where her head is out of the frame would've been a good one. i might try using a wide-angle lens next time, but then the treat may be harder to see.

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  3. So cool AND I think it's interesting that all 3 of them do it. Wonderful shots.

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    1. it was just fun to do and to see if we got anything decent or not.

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  4. The results turned out pretty darned cool! I'm not sure I want to encourage our dogs to jump for treats though. That's especially true with Blueberry! Years ago, a previous adopter thought it would be a good idea to teach her to sit in front of her, then jump up and take food out of her mouth! It took us a long time to convince her that was not acceptable! lol

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    1. we only did this a few times with each dog. it would've been too easy to fill them up with cookies. but it was nice and fun break for them.

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  5. I think you got some fabulous shots! Bettina jumps for treats but it's hard to be the tosser and the picture taker!

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    1. not too bad for a first-time effort. but i'll really have to remember to take a series of shots and track more quickly.

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  6. I really like standing looking directly down on the dog from right above them, dropping a treat or toy at them, and snapping the picture using a nice wide angle (18 is the widest I've used) to get shot of the gaping wide open mouth. I'm not sure how that would work with greyhounds though.

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    1. when i've tried that with our greyhounds they often let the treat hit them on the head. eventually they do get it. but it is funny to watch them come around and realize that they can go for the treat before it bounces off their nose.

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