Sammy, Harry, and Loki...and photographing the black Greyhound

A long time ago I was asked by Carrie of Tales and Tails about how to photograph black Greyhounds. I'll share a few suggestions on how I photograph them that you might find helpful:

• Photograph black Greyhounds in shade whenever possible (pictured: Sammy, photographed in open shade):

• Avoid mid-day, direct sunlight, if possible, to prevent hot spots on the fur. I prefer to photograph in the early morning or late afternoon when the light is softer and comes in at a lower angle (pictured: Harry, photographed around 9AM):

• If you do use flash outdoors, lower the camera's flash compensation to -1 (or whatever value you prefer) to keep the fur from appearing too shiny as black Greyhounds tend to be that way. (On Nikons, this button is used to control the flash's output when used in combination with turning the command dial either left or right. Image copyright Ken Rockwell.). I set the camera's flash exposure mode to slow-sync, which allows the camera to keep both the background and the subject properly exposed. And if your flash has a tilting head, point it up at least 45 degrees and use a flash diffuser if you have one to soften the light further (pictured: Loki, photographed in late afternoon with flash compensation of -1 and slow-sync):

These are just suggestions which give me the results I'm looking for. Play around with the various settings until you find the values that you like.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 50mm and 105mm VR lens. All shot in RAW, converted to DNG, and imported into Lightroom.)

Some of my favorite photos I took during 2013 (part 2)

Jewel:

Thyme:

Heyokha:

Sadie (belongs to a different owner):

Gypsy:

Laika:

Isis:

Boo:

Violet:

Ringo:

Holly:

Speed Racer:

Mary, Speed Racer, and Trixie:

Cat and Sully:

Rocky:

(All photos taken with the Nikon D600, 50mm, and 105mm lens; shot in RAW, converted to DNG, and imported into Lightroom.)

Some of my favorite photos I took during 2013 (part 1)

Bailee-Mae and Julie:

Andy:

Winston in Marsh Creek:

Tangerine:

Izaskun near the Peach Orchard:

Miami near the Peach Orchard:

Daisy wades in Marsh Creek:

Honda:

Duncan:

Axel, Janel, and Duncan:

PieSky:

(All shot with the Nikon D300 and D600 using the 18-35mm, 50mm, or 105mm lens; shot in RAW, converted to DNG and imported into Lightroom.)

Sadie is salt and pepper

At this stage of her life she's more salt than pepper.

 

(Shot with the Nikon D600 and 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority with aperture set at f/2.8; 1/250 second at ISO 400; center-weighted metered; +0.7 exposure compensation; auto white balance; shot in RAW, converted to DNG and imported into Lightroom.)

An hour in the life of Pie

On Father's Day I met with the family who had won an hour-long session that I donated to photograph their three greyhounds. One of the three was Pi, who arrived from Caliente a year ago. I took several photographs of her because I loved her ears:

It was not long after this that she was found to have osteo in her left foreleg, which was amputated.

Despite having recently-discovered lung nodules which, thankfully, have not grown, Pi was in good spirits. We met at a local park that was bisected by a small stream. I had her pose on a wooden bridge that crossed the stream:

(Her leash was digitally removed.)

After crossing the bridge we walked a bit downstream and stopped in a shady spot. I took a few shots while she laid on the grass:

I had her go back over the bridge so I could get a shot of her ears:

She went back over the bridge a third time to lie down as it had become a little warm for everyone:

Her scar has healed nicely. I marvelled when I looked at it.

I grabbed a couple more shots of her with ears erect, then we called it a day.

Pi's arrival from the track and her subsequent osteo diagnosis and amputation had caught my attention more than most other greys that I've seen at other retirement days. I was glad to see that she was doing well.

How strange that this session foreshadowed what was to come for us, although none of us could see it: just two days later we started our own osteo journey.

Katie 48 days post-amp

After attempting to take a few more pictures of Katie in the early evening light while I had her standing on our front lawn and not being happy with the results, I led both her and Sadie back to our front door to let them inside. While Katie was standing there, waiting, I took one snap and hoped I could at least get a bit of eye color to show up.

Most of the time her eyes look like a couple of black holes in her face. And if you try to compensate for that by opening up your aperture more, you'll overexpose her white fur too much.

I really cropped closely around her eyes, and used an adjustment brush to lighten them to make them a little more visible. At first I thought I should add a little warmth to eliminate the bluish tint (it comes from standing in the shade) by increasing the white balance temperature but I thought, nah -- I liked it better this way. I also sharpened her eyes and the area between them a little, but not too much.

Katie is coming along nicely: she weighs nearly four pounds more than after losing her leg. She barks at the inivisible mailman, sometimes claws us with her leg, and leaps into the back of our van when she goes for a ride.

Speaking of rides, I have another picture to share...

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/2.8; shutter speed 1/500 second at ISO 800; center-weighted; auto white balance; shot in RAW, converted to DNG and imported into Lightroom.)

What is yours is mine...

...and what is mine, is mine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Katie...I get it: you might be minus a limb but you still claim my pillow any chance you get.

Katie was 41 days post-amp when this picture was taken.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/1.8, shutter speed 1/50 second at ISO 220; auto white balance; normal JPG; imported and converted to black-and-white using Lightroom.)

Katie 25 days post-amp

I needed an excuse to practice with my Pocket Wizards and the SB-800 flash, so I decided I'd try them out with Katie as I had never made even a half-serious attempt to try them on her yet.. I had made an attempt with her previously by taking her outside and using my umbrella, but it was clear from the one picture where she stood still long enough that I didn't know what I was doing. So just to simplify things I tried to get a picture of her indoors, dispense with the umbrella stand and just hold the flash in my left hand while holding the camera with my right.

Katie was clearly up to posing for me as I took a few snaps: she'd been feeling more like herself after her first chemo dose a couple of weeks earlier. So it wasn't too hard to get her attention by saying a few choice words to her and ending up with a picture this:

I bounced the flash off the ceiling and used a large aperture to blur the background. After importing the picture into Lightroom I lightened and added a bit of clarity and saturation to her eyes. It's not a good picture by any means, but I wanted to capture that expression of hers.

(Shot with the Nikon D600, SB-800, and Pocket Wizards; aperture priority with aperture set to f/2.8 at 1/60 second and ISO 400; center-weighted; normal JPG.)

Waiting...

This past week we've been preparing for Katie's surgery tomorrow to amputate her right front leg. Last Tuesday Katie went to see a canine oncologist for an FNA appointment. The oncologist thought the humerus had not eroded enough to allow an FNA to be done -- and she was right. We took that as a good thing.

We are probably making it harder on ourselves by all the fretting we're doing. In the meantime, Katie just lives for the present and keeps things simple. Katie looked like this yesterday afternoon when I offered her a cookie:

If you have a moment and think of it, keep her in your thoughts tomorrow and for the days ahead.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/5.6; 1/100 second at ISO 6400; center-weighted; +0.7 exposure compensation; normal JPG.)

Sadie, tonight.

I don't get to practice with my off-camera flash much, so tonight I had Sadie go outside with me. I got to practice for all of five minutes.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens, SB-400 on shoot-through umbrella, and PocketWizard Nikon MiniTT1 and FlexTT5; program mode; shutter speed 1/60 second at f/5.6 and ISO 400; auto white balance; converted to black and white using Lightroom; normal JPG.)

Harry

Early Friday morning at GIG I met Harry and his owner, Nancy. Remember Harry (he's the greyhound with the Roman nose) and the session I did with him at Dewey? They drove all the way from Massachusetts to meet me at Sachs Covered Bridge for another session while attending GIG (I'm lucky that I have repeat customers -- I will not take that for granted).

The mid-morning light was not too harsh when we started photographing, but once the sun rose above the tree line the shadows got really hard. The light also didn't make Harry's coat too shiny or make too many hotspots (always a problem with black greyhounds).

He walked onto a stony stretch alongside Marsh Creek, and then stopped to watch something on the opposite bank. I took a picture as he stood and watched:

(I digitally removed his leash from the picture.)

Harry is one of those Greyhounds with a Roman nose, as well as having a lower right canine that protrudes. It's pretty hard to not love a face like his:

After taking a few pictures of him in the creek we had Harry step atop a bank while I knelt down on the stony stretch so I could look up at him for a different perspective:

I was trying to find shady spots to photograph him in but they were few and far between. At least here, even though he's in the sunlight, he doesn't come off being too shiny.

Towards the end of his session we returned to the grassy field next to the bridge's "parking lot" and took a few snaps there:

(I removed the leash digitally here, too.)

Harry was easy to work with -- as he was when I first met him at Dewey two years ago.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 with the 105mm lens (first, third, and fourth picture), and the Nikon D300 with the 10-24mm zoom (second picture); auto white balance; aperture-priority mode; shot in RAW and converted to JPG using Lightroom.)

Winston

When I went to the Greyhounds In Gettysburg event this year I flew to Baltimore a day earlier (on Wednesday) than I had done in previous years so I could meet up with Gretchen and her two English coonhounds on Thursday afternoon. We met at Sachs Covered Bridge and stayed downstream of the bridge. Downstream of the bridge there are a couple of footpaths that one can walk alongside Marsh Creek. We walked down one of those paths until we got to a place where we thought Winston might want to step into the creek.

It was clear to Gretchen that Winston was very excited just being outdoors and sniffing whatever new smells there were by the creek. Unlike last year the trees were late in displaying their spring greenery, so there was a lot more sun and harsh shadows than I preferred. Winston was just dipping his front paws into the creek when I tried to hold my camera down low and blindly pointed it in his direction, taking one fill-flashed picture with my D300 and the SB-400 flash attached to its hot shoe.

When I got home I thought I'd try using a Lightroom preset for a different look.

We walked back to the bridge and fortunately there were few people around while I took a couple of pictures of Gretchen and Winston.

Lately I've been trying to capture a bit of something that describes the relationship between owner and pet. Most owners beg off from being included in a picture, but I'm glad that Gretchen was more than willing to be a part of the picture. I think it makes for a stronger image:

(Shot with the Nikon D300, Nikon 10-24mm zoom (top picture) and SB-400 flash; Nikon D600 and 50mm lens; aperture-priority; center-weighted; shot in RAW and converted to JPG using Lightroom.)

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:

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.)