Katie's not sure of my sanity

I can't help myself: I love it when dogs tilt their heads, trying to comprehend what you're blathering about or what you're doing in their face. It's like they think you've lost your mind but still can't help themselves but look at the spectacle that is you.

Both Sadie and Katie do the head-tilt. I had both girls out on the front porch the other night at dusk to take some photos. Both tolerated my repeated attempts to get something decent in the nice but failing light. Amazingly, Katie was in no hurry to go back inside as she is often wont to do. So I tried photographing her from different angles: some below her, some at eye-level, some above her. She was a good sport through it all. I finally said, "cookie", and she started tilting her head to her left, then to her right.

I was trying to be careful about the background here. I didn't want too much of what was behind her to be a distraction. While focusing on her eyes I set the 50mm lens aperture at f/2 to blur both the foreground (see how her nose is a little fuzzy?) and background. After importing into Lightroom I dodged her eyes and left ear to lighten them, sharpened the area around her eyes, and finally added a slight vignette.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority; aperture set at f/2, camera chose 1/320 second; ISO 400; center-weighted metering; +0.3 exposure compensation; normal JPG.)

Nikki, our second greyhound

When we decided to get Alex, our first greyhound, a dog, we adopted Nikki in 1997. She came from Oklahoma via the Caliente racetrack, and became the perfect companion for Alex. After Alex died in 2003 she was depressed for months until we got Sadie later that year.

 

Oftentimes when I photograph outdoors I will use flash (often an external Nikon SB-400 or SB-800 flash) to fill in shadows. "Fill" is sometimes not an accurate description when referring to fill flash: for me, fill flash is a matter of trying to balance the ambient light (the outdoor light, in this case) and how dark the shadows are. I don't mean to use flash to fill in any shadows completely -- I just want to make the shadows less dark. (I'll talk about how to adjust the flash compensation in another post.)

But in this case, when Nikki was standing on our front lawn one late afternoon I liked how light was falling from her left (or camera right, if you prefer) while the vine-covered wall behind her was in shadow. I positioned myself so that her head was in front of the dark wall and quickly took three photos. I was happiest with this image (the first). I used no fill flash at all in this instance: light reflected from the house to my left provided some fill. With the dark background I was able to capture the shape and texture of her ears (which she often stood up like this), as well as her illuminated left eye.

She was a good, good and happy dog. We miss her.

(Shot with the Nikon D200, 18-200mm zoom at 50mm, 1/180sec at f/7.1, ISO 100, program mode, matrix-metered, auto white balance.)

Greyhounds make you realize...

...you need to practice how to pan:

I got a clear shot of the back three-quarters of this hound, despite the fact that I was shooting at three frames/second. <sarcastic> Awesome... </sarcastic>

This is the second of two photos I took of two black greyhounds running at the 2006 Solvang Streak held during the West Coast Greyhound Gathering (WCGG). This particular hound was in full stretch as it passed by me. The result was disappointing on the one hand, but pretty funny (to me, anyway) on the other.

There are very few opportunities (other than the WCGG) for me to see greyhounds running at speed so I don't get to practice panning much. Well, it's wait 'til next year and try again...

(Shot with my Nikon D200 set to aperture-priority, using a 70-200mm VR zoom at f/6.3 and 1/750th second, ISO 200.)