A Bean and Billy Bob group picture

I usually have a problem trying to photograph Billy Bob when I kneel down to his eye level. That's because when I do that, he starts walking towards me. So without Gayle's help this picture wouldn't have been possible. She worked to get their attention and also keep them on one spot while I shot a few frames.

I used my 70-200mm VR zoom to put some distance between the dogs and me. I also used my SB-800 flash to fill in some shadows. It might be worth getting this printed because -- believe it or not -- I have no prints of my pictures hanging on our walls.

(Shot with the Nikon D600, 70-200mm VR zoom, and SB-800 flash; shutter-priority mode, shutter speed 1/320 second at f/3.2; flash-compensation -0.7; ISO 1000; auto white balance; matrix-metered; shot in RAW and processed in Lightroom.)

Billy Bob does not tip over

February 23rd is Billy's birthday and I wanted to take some birthday photos of him. So I led Bean and him out to our backyard and tried my luck. To get his attention I have a video of barking and rooing greyhounds during a turn-out at a racing kennel, a greyhound roo-fest inside a friend's home, and a morning practice with a squeaking artificial lure at a racetrack. No doubt he wondered what I was doing as I walking back-and-forth on the patio while getting ready to play back the video, so he followed me. Hoping he would keep a bit of distance from since I was using my 70-200mm zoom (which has a 5ft/1.5m minimum focusing distance) I braced myself against a vine-covered wall and played the video a few times. I used my SB-800 flash to provide a bit of fill.

This was his reaction upon hearing the rooing greyhounds.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 with the 70-200mm VR and SB-800; shutter-priority with a shutter speed of 1/320 sec at f/3.2; ISO 400; matrix-metered; shot in RAW and imported into Lightroom.)

Miami

Another shot taken in a grass field north of the infamous peach orchard in Gettysburg, PA. during GIG 2013. I was attracted to how the setting sun acted as a rim light on his legs, brisket, and ears. I couldn't use fill flash here to lighten his body because the grass he's standing in would be illuminated in a pool of light from the flash. I elected to add some fill in post-processing, and used a graduated filter to the sky to bring out some of the clouds. His leash was digitally removed, too, so just know that he wasn't off-lead here.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 and 10-24mm zoom; aperture-priority with aperture set to f/5.6; camera set shutter speed of 1/200 second at ISO 200; center-weighted; +1 exposure compensation; shot in RAW and imported into Lightroom.)

Minty (2003? - 2013) and Hoover (2006? - 2013)

Both taken before their time from smoke inhalation from an overnight fire at home last week.

Minty at Dewey Beach last year:

Hoover at Gettysburg last year:

(Minty: Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 18-35mm zoom at 18mm; aperture-priority with aperture set at f/4; camera set shutter speed to 1/1250 second; matrix-metered; auto white balance; normal JPG.

Hoover: Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 70-200mm VR zoom at 70mm; program mode; shutter speed 1/250 second at f/8; -0.3 exposure compensation; auto white balance; shot in RAW and converted in Lightroom.)

Before and After #2: Ava

I haven't done this in several months, but I thought I'd share another before-and-after shot. This picture of Ava shows her standing on the driveway that leads up to the Richardson house atop Marye's Heights in Fredericksburg, VA.

It's overexposed to a great degree, so I backed off the exposure overall by about a half stop. The sunlit side on the right side of her neck and chest were overexposed as well, so I used an adjustment brush to burn in those areas, but not too much. Adding a vignette darkened her ears too much, so I dodged her ears with another adjustment brush (it's hard to make out since it's such a small area in the picture). Last of all, I cloned out her red leash and its shadow, which wasn't hard to do but it was time-consuming.

And I encountered the memory problem that other Lightroom users have run into when placing more than 10 cloned spots on one picture:. I had to exit out of Lightroom to free up memory. It's somewhat annoying, and I've read it hasn't been fixed in Lightroom 4 yet, either.

Note also that I'm working with an Adobe DNG file: I had to convert it from a Nikon NEF raw file to Adobe DNG because Lightroom 3.6 (the version I use) doesn't support D600 RAW files and never will. (I also didn't want to install Nikon's own software because that would add another step in my workflow.)  Adobe stopped supporting my version months ago, so I have no choice but to upgrade to LR 4 (and Windows 7). Which brings up the problem of software companies always playing catch-up when new cameras are introduced with their particular RAW files if that's what you like to shoot. If I had shot JPEG, no problem.

Abbey

A tip often cited by pro pet photographers to get interesting pictures of dogs is to get down to the dog's eye level. I agree. This is because most pet photos are taken looking down at the pet. And you'd like to take a picture with the idea of "this is what I see", and not take a picture that looks like everyone else's.

If you go to greyhound events like the Solvang Greyhound Gathering, Greyhounds In Gettysburg, and Greyhounds Reach the Beach at Dewey Beach, you might see some dude occasionally photographing greyhounds by walking in front of the dog, keeping pace with it, and hunched over while holding a camera down at arm's-length, pointing it at the dog, and snapping pictures. Ummm...that would probably be me.

I would not be surprised if I amuse more people in this manner. I'm sure one of my friends has a picture or two of me doing this. But I like the different perspective from shooting this way. For example, this is Abbey, one of the greyhounds I took pictures of at Dewey:

I used a wide-angle lens to make sure the dog is in the field of view since I can't look through the viewfinder to see the dog (in this case, I'm using the 18-200mm zoom set at 18mm). I aimed the camera in the general direction of the greyhound, set the autofocus mode to "Auto Area AF" (the solid white rectangle icon on the back of the D300), and the focus mode to Continuous-servo AF (also known as AF-C) since the distance between me and the subject is always changing. Then I take a few shots and see what I get. Since wide-angle lenses have great depth-of-field pretty much everything is more or less in focus. But it also overly exaggerates the size of the nose compared to, say, the back legs.

Since I was in broad daylight I used my SB-800 flash to fill the shadows somewhat, and set the flash mode to slow-sync so that the foreground and background would be properly exposed.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom lens set at 18mm; shutter-priority mode with shutter speed set at 1/500 second and ISO 200; camera chose aperture of f/10; SB-800 used for fill-flash; flash mode set to SLOW; auto white balance; processed in Lightroom; shot in RAW.)

A greyhound threesome in black-and-white

I don't see enough greyhounds rendered in black-and-white. So, if the thought occurs to me and if I think the image might lend itself to being in black-and-white, I give it a try and see what happens. Sometimes it's straight-up b&w; sometimes, it's sepia; sometimes, it's in platinum.

Here is an example of a color photo processed using the Platinum preset in Lightroom. First is the original picture in color:

And here is what it looks like after using the Platinum preset:

I can't say I recall how the three of them ended up arranged this way, but I thought it looked interesting enough to photograph. There's a strong sense of perspective implied by the angles of the greyhounds' forelegs, the edge of the surf behind them, and the tilted horizon line. I think I like the the black-and-white version more.

Greyhounds often lie upright in this "sphinx" position, where they rest on their elbows with forelegs extended in front of them and the back legs supporting a rear end that doesn't touch the ground. It looks uncomfortable (you often hear greyhound owners say this) but they have no problem lying this way. But they often put their heads down on their forelegs, look up at you and give you these big, sad puppy eyes so that you'll feel sorry for them. Sometimes they'll add a loud sigh to enhance the effect. It's one of their tricks.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom lens set at 18mm; shutter-priority with shutter speed set at 1/500 second at f/10 and ISO 200; auto white balance; SB-800 provided fill-flash at -0.7 flash compensation; shot in RAW.)

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.)

Solvang Thursday at Carivintâs Winery

We arrived in Solvang, CA, last Thursday afternoon after a two-and-a-half-hour drive for the 7th annual West Coast Greyhound Gathering. After unloading our stuff in our Royal Copenhagen Inn hotel room and walking about the town a bit, we stopped by the Carivintâs winery before a special wine-tasting (just for the gathering) started at 6pm.

Carivintâs, as part of their way of doing business, donates a portion of their profits to animal shelters and support groups. For Greyt Legs (the non-profit organization that helps newly-retired greyhounds with leg injuries get needed medical care, and who also puts together the West Coast Greyhound Gathering) whippet-owner Paul Ramos (who is in the second picture) of Carivintâs created two special greyhound-labeled wines (which featured Tennile, one of the first greyhounds helped by Greyt Legs, on the back label).

A percentage of proceeds from those two wines would be donated to Greyt Legs. So if you are ever visiting Solvang, with or without your pups, pay them a visit -- they're wonderful.

Here are a few pictures taken during the wine-tasting:

(All photos: Nikon D300; 18-200mm zoom; SB-800 with diffusion cover and light bounced off the ceiling; auto or flash white balance; exposure compensation +1/3; normal JPG but for the wine bottle, which was shot in RAW. Note also about the bottle picture: flash mode was slow-sync to exposure the background properly. In most of the other pictures, the flash mode was the default.)