Sadie asleep on a late fall afternoon

Lately I have not been having much success in photographing Sadie and getting anything I liked. This afternoon however, as I walked into our bedroom to fold some laundry, she, Katie, and Tooey were asleep on our bed. It's not unusual for dog and cat to share like this. With sunlight spilling in through our wood shutters I noticed how it backlit Sadie's ear, and I liked the effect. So I left the room to get my camera and hoped that I would not get Sadie's attention. When I returned I took a few snaps.

I liked this one the best -- it happens to be the first frame I shot:

 

I was hoping I wouldn't overexpose too much the fur in front of her ear. I played around with different color and black-and-white presets in Lightroom just to see what I'd get, but I ultimately left it in color and just added a bit of fill to bring out the shadow details. A vignette was also added to make you look at her.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm lens; aperture-priority, with aperture set at f/4; camera chose shutter speed of 1/160 second; auto white balance; ISO 200; normal JPG.)

Harry

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom set at 31mm; program mode; camera chose 1/250 second at f/13 and ISO 200; daylight white balance; processed in Lightroom using the Creamtone preset; shot in RAW.)

Sadie as if in graphite

I don't live to post-process: it's a chore, and I'd rather be out shooting. But part of the fun for me in post-processing pictures is trying out different Lightroom presets and seeing what I get. I'll first create a virtual copy which can be quickly discarded if I don't like the results (easier for me to play around with a virtual copy instead of repeatedly ctrl-z to undo things). Then it's preset play-time.

When I tried out a black-and-white preset on a Sadie photo I got a rendering that very much looks like some of these super-detailed graphite drawings that my wife loves. Other than making some minor exposure adjustments after applying the preset I cloned out a skin tag that Sadie has on her lower left eyelid.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens; aperture-priority with aperture set to f/2, camera chose 1/250 sec; ISO 200; matrix-metered; cloudy white balance; normal JPG.)

Slow-syncing Sadie the Stalker

Sadie stalks. If she is playing in one room while you are in another room, get her attention and look at her in some funny way. She will stop; she will look in your direction; she will slowly come towards you, then stop, jump, and give you a loud bark. It looks like this:

I wanted to capture her stalking in some unnerving sort of way. To get that effect I decided to use slow-sync flash mode. Slow-sync mode allows you to let in more light so that your backgrounds look more natural and not dark. But this also means your exposure time may be longer, so your subject may look smeared in the image. This is because the flash fires when the shutter first opens. While the shutter remains open if the exposure is long and the subject moves during the remainder of the exposure, the subject will appear blurry or smeared.

To switch to slow-sync mode on the Nikon, press the button with the bolt icon (usually located to the left and below the pop-up flash), and while holding that button down, turn the rear dial until you see the word "SLOW" in the top LCD panel.

I set the ISO to 800 since I was indoors, but I guessed the exposure would be long, but no idea how long. The exposure time ended up being 1.3 seconds. You can see the slow-sync effects: the hallway behind her is overexposed because of the lights in the kitchen, there is a distinct image of her when the flash fired, and there's also a ghostly blur as she walked towards me after the flash fired and before the shutter closed. I cropped and tilted the photo, then used a Lightroom develop preset to get an eerie look.