Working Like a Dog

This was my favorite image from the Cute Pooch Calendar contest.

The chair in this picture is about 2 feet tall mind you. You can gauge

the size of dog and the chair based on the real apple in the image.

Yesterday was a whirlwind of a day. I had a booth at an outdoor dog fair in Cedar Park near Austin. The event was called Paws in the Park and it was organized by the Austin Dog Alliance. What is a photographer doing at an outdoor dog fair you ask. What do you think? I was taking pictures of course. I mentioned this in my August 17th blog post (you should read it if you haven't already).

The reason I was taking pictures was for content for a 2009 calendar that I was asked to help design and print for the Austin Dog Alliance. After setting up the booth, I started taking pictures of any dog that would sit still for a second or two. Each entrant's owner into the Cute Pooch Calendar contest contributed $10, $5 of which went to the Austin Dog Alliance and the other $5 covered the cost of a 4 x 6 inch print each owner received at the event before they went home.

I used my Nikon 50mm f/1.4 for the entire shoot which allowed me to keep the aperture wide open and the depth of field really shallow. I passed off my 2GB Lexar and SanDisk Compact Flash cards to an assistant who threw them into my portable Epson PictureMate printer and selected the best image from each series and printed it. We kept switching out cards when I got about 100 images on them or about 5 dogs since I was taking about 20 frames per dog. We were moving fast and furious so the 3 hours went by quickly.

One of my favorite dogs and pictures from the event was a little chihuahua (pictured above). He seemed so scared that he just sat on the little chair I brought as a prop and shook nervously. He was selected as Mr. September because of the "Back to School" theme. There were a bunch of other great shots and all the dogs were wonderful, but this little guy was probably my favorite.

If you are wondering how I diffused the sunlight, you will have to check back in future blog posts. I designed and built a giant photo booth and diffuser that I will blog about in more detail in upcoming weeks. I also plan on posting the plans for the photo booth and maybe even doing a video on how to set it up and use it, which I will post on YouTube.