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.

Man’s Best Friend

I had a great time photographing Steve and his dog, Smokey,
last week in Austin. Smokey, an Australian Shepherd, is very
friendly and quite a ham. I was able to capture almost 200 images
in the last 30 minutes of the day. This image is my favorite though.
I captured it on our way home as the sun was setting in the background.

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of photographing Steve’s dog, Smokey. Smokey is an Australian Shepherd and was a blast to photograph. Steve had been wanting some professional quality pictures of his best friend, especially since he is growing older. He has plenty of pictures from the puppy years, but now Smokey is approaching 11 years old, and Steve didn’t really have any good recent pictures of him. That’s where I came in.

We decided to take Smokey to the park and let him run around and just be a dog so that I could get pictures of his personality, not posed pictures of him in a studio in front of a backdrop. After letting him explore a little, I had Steve help me direct Smokey so that I could capture him in the right setting based on the background and available light. I told Steve to get Smokey to go one way, then move back the other way so that I could take several images using my Nikon D2X’s continuous shooting mode at 5 frames per second and my Nikon 70-200 mm VR lens. We repeated that same process for several different set ups.

We started in a large field with both short and tall grass. We then moved to a pedestrian bridge where we had Smokey cross several times. After that, we moved to a walking path that curved back and forth and had Smokey walk along the path toward us. Since we were all getting hot at that point, we stopped to let Smokey have some water from a dog fountain. I was even able to get some good shots there too. Finally, we ended up in the pond. And when I say we, I mean Smokey. He loved retrieving the frisbee that Steve brought along for this reason specifically.

All in all, we spent about 30 minutes walking around and taking pictures. Actual shooting time was about 10 minutes, during which I captured 177 images. After deleting the ones that were out of focus or those where Smokey had turned away from the camera, I had 116 good images for Steve to choose from. So, I would say we had a successful day at the park.

There are some things you should consider if you are planning on trying to get some great images of your dog:

One of the most obvious is to pick a location that has a lot of room so the dog can run around freely. This allowed me to get a lot of great pictures without distracting backgrounds or with other people or animals in them. Another good tip is to let the owner direct the dog since the pet is used to listening to them and not you as the photographer. I wanted Smokey to forget I was even there so that he would act normally. Another tip that goes without saying is to plan your shoot before you get there. Steve and I had talked about what sequence we were going to follow before we started. We planned out the scenes, reserving the pond area for last. Finally, get shots from many different angles. Take some from the standing position, some from a squatting position, and some from a prone position. The more angles you take pictures from, the better your results will be. I was constantly moving around trying to get shots from a bunch of different points of view.

But, the most important tip I can give you is this one. When you decide to lay down to get those low angle images, check to make sure there aren’t any ant piles around. In my haste to get some great shots of Smokey in the tall grass, I didn’t thoroughly check the spot I chose to lay down. After I clicked off about 5 images, I felt the bites on my leg. I knew exactly what it was. Without dropping my very expensive camera gear, I deftly brushed off the nearly 100 ants that I could see crawling on my shirt, shorts, and legs. Luckily I was able to escape with only about 10 ant bites. Not as bad as it could have been for sure!