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.)

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.)

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.)

Treasure (2001 - 2013)

Another of my Greyhound clients went to the Bridge yesterday: Treasure. I met her at Dewey Beach in 2011. Her owner asked me to get a close-up of her adorable front teeth:

I just saw Treasure and her owner at GIG a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't take any pictures of her then. I've always liked this one particular picture I took of the two of them during our session at Dewey:

I was trying to convey the closeness of their relationship by not only showing them walking together, but by showing their footprints as part of that companionship.

Your mom misses you, Treasure, as do all the people who came to know you.

Unexpected departures

Within the span of a week I have learned of the passing of two sighthounds that I have chanced to photograph: one Greyhound (Arrow), and one Saluki (Parker). Both died unexpectedly.

Arrow was a Greyhound that I met after he'd been returned to Fastfriends in 2011 because of food-aggression issues that became too much for his initial adopter (who loved him very much) to overcome. He was a striking brindle boy -- maybe I should say "half-brindle" because he carried most of what little stripes he had on his left side. His head was split right down the middle: stripes on the left half, nothing on the right.

He went to the foster home of a long-standing volunteer, who diligently worked on his issues. Eventually, the volunteer adopted him to add to her pack.

It was today when I saw a picture of Arrow roaching for the camera that in the caption were the words "final picture." I was puzzled at first, then I realized and understood what she was saying, although I did not (and do not now) know the circumstances of what happened to him. The suddenness of his passing took my breath away. His stay in his new home was much too short, but I try to dwell on the fact that he was home and with people who loved him.

Parker was a Saluki that I am pretty sure I had seen at a previous Solvang Greyhound gathering. His owner introduced herself to me last year, and reintroduced herself to me this year. She told me that she was writing a travel piece about the gathering for the website Dogster, and so asked me for permission to use some of the photos that I was to take during the Gathering. I had photographed Parker being blessed by Fr. Gerald Barron of Santa Ines Mission in Solvang during the Blessing of the Hounds on Friday:

Later that afternoon, at the pizza dinner, Parker and his owner sat close to us. I grabbed a few shots of him as he was curled up on the grass underneath the party tent where we all ate:

He was a little shy and kept to himself.

Towards the end of last week I was told that a few days after returning from Solvang, Parker had died from hemangiosarcoma. He was full of cancer, but he gave no outward sign that he was in trouble. His owner will still write her travel piece, only now it has turned into a remembrance story. Perhaps a couple of my pictures will accompany her article in Dogster.

I've been thinking tonight about these two. Perhaps there is some comfort in that their passings were short, but I think that it is small comfort nonetheless. There are two big holes in two different households now, and though there will be others to take their place, their holes will not be filled.

Ava and Daisy at the Richardson House, Fredericksburg, VA

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 70-200mm VR zoom and SB-800 flash; shutter-priority, shutter speed set to 1/500 second at f/5 at ISO 100; slow-sync; auto white balance; processed in Lightroom and DxO FilmPack 3.)

Ava near the Sunken Road, Fredericksburg, VA

During my weekend at Greyhounds Rock Fredericksburg (GRF) in Virginia, I had a couple of hours free on Sunday afternoon to do a session. My customer had contacted me to ask a question about doing a session Greyhounds in Gettysburg (GIG) next year, and when I mentioned that I was going to be in Fredericksburg attending the event we arranged to hook up for an hour or so to photograph her two Greyhounds. She actually drove a couple of hours from her home in Maryland to meet me -- I'm still stunned that someone would do this. So I had better not screw this up.

Before we flew out to Virginia I was mulling over where would be a nice location to shoot and still be close to the hotel hosting GRF. I didn't really think the ponds adjacent to the hotel was picturesque enough. My friends suggested the Sunken Road a couple of miles to the east near downtown Fredericksburg. It was a great suggestion.

If you don't know your Civil War history, the Sunken Road (I didn't before I watched Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War), which runs parallel to a stone wall, is the site where, in December 1862,  Confederate troops under Brigadier General T. R. R. Cobb and General James Longstreet fought off numerous charges by Union soldiers in their attempts to take Marye's Heights, which overlook Fredericksburg. It ended being a disaster for the bluecoats, and ultimately led to the resignation of Union General Ambrose Burnside as head of the Army of the Potomac. Such was the slaughter of the Union troops that General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia commented during the battle, "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."

Although the sun was still somewhat high above the horizon, it was settling to the west, so the lighting was spectacular: low enough angle, nice long shadows, highlights not overly harsh. I took some photos of Ava and Daisy along the Sunken Road, and then we decided to walk up a driveway that led to a house atop a hill. After passing through a gate at the beginning of the driveway Ava stopped, turned, and looked to her left to see what was going on back on the Sunken Road.

I digitally removed the leash and its shadow, brought down the exposure, increased the Recovery slider to 100 to restore highlights I'd blown out, played with tone curves a bit to add more contrast, and added a vignette. I had a good time photographing these two; I'll share a photo of Daisy in a future post.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 70-200mm VR zoom at 70mm; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/2.8; camera chose shutter speed of 1/500 second at ISO 200; center-weighted metered; auto white balance; shot in RAW, converted to DNG format using Adobe DNG converter, and imported into  Lightroom.)

Joey

I had two sessions booked at Dewey for Saturday.

Joey was my first customer. She is a striking red. I met her and her owner Ruth across the street from our rental house and led them to the beach. We chit-chatted a bit to get to know each other as we approached the surf. I tried getting some pictures of them running along the water's edge:

Then I thought it might be nice to take a photo of their footprints in the sand (I haven't taken one yet that I've been supremely happy with):

The sunlight was still low enough in the sky so the shadows were not overly harsh.

The most special moment of the session for me was when Joey and Ruth sat on the sand together for awhile. It was soon obvious to me that they have a very close relationship. I decided to stand off a ways and use my wide-angle zoom to show them together under the immense sky that Saturday morning:

I decided to make a virtual copy of this and convert it to black-and-white:

I did the same for the next picture:

Then I thought I'd go in the opposite direction, taking some zoomed-in shots while still far away:

You can see that the large aperture (f/2.8) I was using blurs the background nicely while still retaining enough depth-of-field to keep Joey and Ruth sharp.

Finally, one last shot of them together:

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 10-24mm zoom, 50mm prime, and 70-200mm VR zoom lenses; shot in RAW; converted to JPG using Lightroom.)

No puppy. Boo.

The number of dogs that were retiring from both Tucson and Caliente tracks have been declining recently. So a dog haul from Abilene, KS was put together so that Fastfriends Greyhound Adoption, GreySave, Operation Greyhound, Greyhound Adoption Center, and Homeward Hounds would get some retirees. Word filtered in that there was an injured four-month-old greyhound puppy that would be included, and that Fastfriends would get it. Who wouldn't want to meet a landshark?

But while we waited at Fastfriends for the van to arrive with the group's hounds from the hauler (who was running late), word came that there was no puppy aboard. In fact, the "puppy" was more like a year old, and that its injury had almost completely healed. Even so, it was decided to leave the puppy out of this haul because it was deemed risky to have a smaller hound mixed in a number of adults. No sense in taking the chance of the youngster getting re-injured.

But still...it was a disappointment. Nevertheless, when the nine hounds arrived Joyce and a number of volunteers were ready to help out.

Joyce took it upon herself to trim the nails of one greyhound:

I noticed she was sitting in a pool of light but if I didn't use fill flash here the shadows would be too dark. On the other hand, I didn't want the flash to be too obvious. So I dialed in -0.7 flash compensation to lower the flash's power.

In the following picture I had set the flash setting to slow sync. This was because I wanted to properly expose everything. The only problem was I had to use a slow shutter speed to do this. I waited until the hound was still before pressing the shutter button. This was taken at 1/30 second:

This is about as slow a shutter speed as I'm comfortable with using a non-VR lens.

I guess sub-consciously I've been interested in getting pictures of hounds and the hands of those helping them. Here are a few:

This was a great-looking group of hounds. Maybe a puppy will come in a future haul. One can hope.

Checking for a smile

Last weekend about a dozen greyhounds (all from Arizona) arrived Fastfriends. Because the actual retirement was off-again, on-again during the week there weren't enough volunteers at first to walk all the dogs from station to station (from tick check to bathing, to nail trimming, to ear cleaning, to medical tent). I got the chance to walk a greyhound through part of their processing instead of taking pictures for a change. When I got to the station I handed my short (24" at the shoulders) female greyhound named "Tazor" off to another volunteer I was free to take pictures.

I took pictures of every greyhound during their time in the horse corral. Some of them paid more attention to me than others. It was after being small-dog and cat-tested that another female greyhound (whose name I don't recall -- maybe it was "Tazor" again) walked up to me. I thought I'd try to support her head with one hand while holding my camera with the other. For someone who is just strong enough to drag my shadow behind me it was a little difficult to hold the camera steady, focus on her eyes, and not take too long while doing so. I took two shots: this is the first and the better of the two (the other shot focused on her muzzle):

She was perfectly fine with me doing this. I took my pictures. We looked at each other for a few moments. And then, it was time for her to leave the corral and to bring the next greyhound in. I don't think she'll have to wait long to be adopted.

(Shot with the Nikon D300, 50mm f/1.8 lens, and SB-800 flash; aperture-priority mode, with aperture set to f/2.8; camera chose shutter speed of 1/320 second at ISO 200; -0.7 exposure compensation; flash compensation set to -0.7; center-weighted metered, auto white balance; normal JPG.)

Nine in July

Whenever an upcoming greyhound retirement day is announced I look forward to it. It's always fun to see the new arrivals. And it's interesting to see glimpses of their personalities, even through the stress of leaving the familiar territory of racetrack and kennel.

Since it was around noontime the shadows were strong and deep, so I used my flash to lighten them. Even then I did not set the flash compensation to 0, but instead used my usual -0.7. Turning down the flash's power when standing under the shade of a tree results in the picture being a little dark but the shadows created by the flash are not too obvious:

On the other hand, for this picture I set the flash compensation back to 0 because I was standing in brilliant sunshine:

It's more obvious that I used flash here.

Most of the time I just take head shots of the greyhounds. But I wanted to get both the greyhound and Marissa both in the same shot here:

There was a certain black-and-white female greyhound named "Pookie" that a lot of people noticed and liked immediately. Here are several pictures of her:

She got very excited being talked to in baby-talk -- she has a very happy tail.

Jesse the Chinese Crested did his part in small-dog testing (he played the part of the small dog):

With this group of dogs Jesse pretty much had no problem with any of them.

Kinko again played the part of the cat. Doesn't this need the caption "Draw me like one of your French girls"?:

(Look that up if you don't know what I'm referring to.)

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom, the 50mm lens, and the SB-800 flash. Normal JPG.)

Something new

I ordered a cheap light stand, shoot-through umbrella, and an umbrella adapter to learn how to use off-camera flash. After my order arrived it sat on a chair unopened until this evening (all because one of our cats is using the chair for his naps and I don't want to disturb him). Finally, after getting the umbrella set up in the backyard I took Sadie outside and had her pose for me when I fired off a few shots.

Of the pictures I took, I like this one best:

I cropped the image a bit, made some cosmetic fixes, and added a vignette. I have a lot to learn about how to use an umbrella; it'll be awhile before I feel comfortable enough to use it in a session.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens, SB-800 flash, and two Pocket Wizards; program mode; camera set shutter speed at 1/60th second, aperture at f/5, at ISO 200; auto white balance; normal JPG.)

Dewey sunrise silhouette #4

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm VR zoom and SB-800 flash; program mode; camera chose shutter speed of 1/250 second at f/22 at ISO 800; auto white balance; slow-sync mode; normal JPG.)

Keiki and Marley

What kind of photo can you get in 10 minutes?

You can get this:

...which makes for a great stink-eye picture, but was not what I was asked to get.

Or, you can get this:

Wow...they sort of arranged themselves with their faces about equidistant from me, and I had a split-second to get it, or the moment would be lost. As it so happened, this was the very last frame I took.

I hope to get more time with them in the future and really do a better job for the two of them.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f/1.8, and the 70-200mm VR zoom lens and the SB-800 flash; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/5.6; camera chose shutter speed of 1/320 second (top, at ISO 800)  and 1/125 second (bottom, at ISO 400); center-weighted metered; exposure compensation set to -0.7; auto white balance; shot in RAW.)

Soon...

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom at f/5 and the SB-800 flash; slow-sync; aperture-priority; camera chose shutter speed of 1/50 second at ISO 200; center-weighted metered; auto white balance; normal JPG.)

Faces from the Fastfriends picnic

There were some stunning greyhound faces at the Fastfriends Greyhound Adoption annual picnic this past weekend. As I had done at the GreySave picnic two weeks prior, I used center-weighted metering to bring out the eye color. I just want to know what will give me the look I want, and when to use it. And it has to be fun, too.

Anyway, enough of the tech-talk -- let me share some pictures I took during the picnic:

All but the fourth and fifth pictures in this series were taken with the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens set at f/2.8 (the other lens used was the Nikon 70-200mm VR). The 50mm lens is crazy-good.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm and 70-200mm VR zoom, and the SB-800 flash; auto white balance; flash compensation set to -0.7 or -1.0; normal JPG.)