Ex obscurum lux lucius*

Out of darkness, light. (I think. Mom? Feel free to step in and make corrections.  Just don't use your red pencil on your iPad...)

Yes, after having decided that I maybe knew what was wrong with my pictures yesterday, I decided to see if I could improve upon yesterday's efforts.

This first photo is intentionally dark.  It actually came our almost exactly how I hoped it would - Abby's eyes and nose are in focus and yet have that 'dark and mysterious' look I was going for.  For this photo, the room was fairly dark (4pm on a cloudy afternoon in a room facing east, so no direct sun), the flash was on it's lowest power setting, and Abby was at an angle from the flash (which was already diffused with a white umbrella). I'm REALLY happy with this photo because it came out as planned (which doesn't happen much yet...).

Flushed with my success, I thought I'd play around with moving my subjects in relation to the light source (much easier to wave dog treats around than move the flash-umbrella-stand contraption around, BTW).  Since this was a "let's see what happens" experiment, I'm not disappointed, I just got some photos I like better than others.

In this photo, the light was off the left side of the photo at the 'classic' 45-degree angle to Abby.  It's okay, it just doesn't grab me.  I can't quite tell you why.

Backlit (you can actually see part of the umbrella in upper right-hand corner).  I like this.  I'd actually like to work on making this more of a silhouette, but I like the on-purpose backlighting.

Another shot where the light was at a 45-ish degree angle to Fi.  I like how her eye and her nose are bright, and yet there are interesting shadows on her face.  (Although that might be because she's getting a little shaggy...)

I was playing around with the ISO again (no, I clearly haven't learned my lesson...) but I like the composition of this - the bright eyes, the light top-knot of hair, half the face in shadow.  And I LOVE the eyes.

Poor Fi.  She should really talk to her groomer (that would be me, BTW); her hair is hanging in her eyes, her muzzle is shaggy....  But she's cute!    And this photo was an attempt to duplicate the photo of Abby just above (although this time I managed to get the ISO upped a bit so the eyes and nose are in focus). Apparently I've seen Phantom of the Opera too many times, because I like these photos where half the face is in shadow.

But truly, of all the photos I got today using the remote flash (and I got a bunch, many of which I'm quite happy with), I'm most pleased with the first one.

Day 63/365.