New Snow and a Head-Smack

When I got home from work today, I was able to get a few shots of the girls playing in some new snow. Our winter has been really 'weak' on the snow front, and so even a little bit of new snow is a chance to have some fun.  I was tired this afternoon, so I mostly just pointed the camera (the P520 today - a sealed body is a good choice in wet weather) and let the girls do their thing.   Luckily the 'Doodle Launcher was working well, so I didn't have to do much!

Easy photos and the girls were having fun, so everybody won today!

On to the head smack.   My father has been taking some really cool photos of silver Bedouin jewelry that he and my Mom collected when we were in Saudi Arabia, and while I was looking at the photos, I kept thinking, "What cool subject matter!  It would be neat to have something to photograph other than dogs when learning about lighting."  Not that taking pictures of the girls is a bad thing, I just don't want to burn my models out...  And then I immediately had to give myself a head-smack.  Duh. I'm surrounded by really cool guitars and amps EVERYWHERE in the house.   And I think it would be hard to make the argument that a Stratocaster is NOT art.  And guitars and amps have a lot more patience than dogs, especially when I'm fiddling around with lighting settings.

So here is a photo from yesterday.  Not spectacular, but I really like the lighting.  

And I've got a ton of 'cool subject matter' that doesn't have to be bribed with steak bits!

Day 70/365.

Happy Birthday!

Today is Gary's 60th birthday and with a little help from Walmart's party section, and much help from my intrepid models, we are ready to get the party started!  Fi really doesn't like stuff on her head, so I was a tad surprised - and pleased - that she tolerated both a party hat AND a tiara!  The power of cheese at work again!

Happy birthday, Gary!

Day 69/365.

A 'Bluebird' Day

Today was one of those gorgeous spring days.  Unfortunately our snow is 'rotten' (it crumbles, and you can punch though slush, making for difficult walking/frisbee chasing) so there wasn't a lot of frisbee action today, and I was a little tired for shooting creative shots, so I got some 'standard' dog-against-blue-sky photos.  Not that that is a bad thing!

Day 68/365.

Shhhhh!

Be very, very quiet!  You know what they say.... let sleeping Doodles lie!

Day 67/365.

Fun With Dogs and Flash

Day 66/365.

Change of Venue

Okay, so we just moved into the living room.  The weather has been cloudy and kinda blah - too warm to make cross-country skiing fun, and too cold to make cycling fun.  While I'm not in a dark mood, I'm in the mood for darker photos.   Of course, with only one flash in the biggest room in the house, the darker look isn't totally surprising.  So more lighting will go on my wish list.  After the 35mm f/1.8 lens, that is.  *grin*

"Fi, why are we on the couch?"  "Dunno, but the crazy lady with the camera has treats, so let's play along..."

One of the few photos of Fi where her hair isn't in her eyes.  She really need to talk to her stylist!

I could take these pictures all day long.  Looking at the files on my hard drive, apparently I DO take these all day long!

What a sweetie!  (And you can see her eyes. Sort of.)

Soft light just works for Abby.  She's a pretty girl and this light really highlights how pretty she is!

I took a ton of pictures this afternoon, and even though my models were plied with lots of treats, they eventually decided they wanted to do something else.

"We're done!"

Heehee.  They really are such sweeties.   And very patient.  And I really like the lighting in this last photo.  Did I mention that I really like the white umbrella for diffusing the light?

Day 65/365.

It's All About the Snooters

Because it's fun!  And the snow is really mushy, and frisbee time is limited because the girls are sinking into the snow, and if they move quickly when ankle/knee deep in mush, they can tweak the aforementioned knees/ankles, and I'm trying to avoid that.  So only minimal frisbee action today.  But plenty of camera action.

I love the light on Abby's eyes and her hair with the contrasting shadows in this photo.  And that totally kissable snooter!

Fi looks a bit like she's got 'bed-head', and again, I am really pleased with the light and the shadows in this photo.  (And, of course, the snooter!  What a snooter!)

The above two photos were taken with a white umbrella in front of the flash.  Because I have a silver-lined umbrella, I thought I'd try it and see what I got.  So far, meh.  Some of it might have to do with how I adjust the strength of the flash.  Some of it might also have to do with the fact that the girls still aren't 100% comfortable with the umbrellas and I couldn't get them to sit directly in front of it (there is a reason why all the light on the girls faces is at an angle, and it's not 100% artistic - in fact, I'm lucky that it looks cool, because we're still working on getting comfortable with the umbrellas!).

Not that that is a bad photo - I still really like it - I think I just like the more diffuse light of the white umbrella. But I'll play around with them both more (while doling out turkey treats in an attempt to convince the girls that the umbrellas aren't evil).

After the silver umbrella, I went back to the white umbrella, but put the light down lower.  Both girls look slightly demonic, and in Abby's case, that's not entirely inaccurate!  Just Kidding!  Abby is an angel.  Most of the time.  When she wants to be.  And when there are treats involved!  Heehee.

Okay, maybe she doesn't look THAT demonic.  She actually looks sort of cute!

Fi, however, does look a tad demonic.

But it was fun.  And hopefully next year is going to have about 180 months in it, because I've already got more than enough photos to fill a calendar, and it's only March!

Day 64/365.

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.

In Which I Venture Into Uncharted Waters

After taking the requisite frisbee-in-slushy-snow photos, I decided to try more of the off-camera flash photos.  Because I KNOW they can be cool.   And I was certain I had the concept dialed in.  I mean, pick an aperture I like, set an ISO and *poof* everything will magically appear.

Or not.

When I picked an aperture that gave me a bit of depth, I had such a slow enough shutter speed that I ended up with a nice hazy dog.

Not what I was shooting for.

So then I thought I'd go with shutter speed; surely that would help.  Except that in shutter priority, I had such a big aperture (I was using my beloved 50mm f/1.8 for all these photos) that everything was wildly over-exposed.

Yes, I could tweak that in Lightroom, but really not what I was going for...

The tweaked version.  Better, obviously, but the whole goal was to get nicely lit photos without massive tweaking.

So I dropped the flash down to 1/8 power and stuck with shutter priority, because at least I was getting something.  Even with the flash dropped down, I still had a f/1.8 aperture.  Which gave me ZERO depth of field.  Which meant I got a lot of noses.

And eyeballs.

Dramatic eyes, but this would have been much cooler had her nose been more than a blurry blob!

But not noses AND eyeballs, at least not in the same shot.  In case I didn't understand the whole aperture/depth-of-field concept before, I think I've got it now... But I was mystified as to WHY I couldn't get a smaller aperture.  In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have fixed my ISO at 200 (I had fixed it because I read something about how you should take your ISO off the 'auto' setting when you are using your flash off-camera; for some reason, I thought I should have a low ISO...  Don't ask me now what that reason was...).

But since I didn't really think about changing the ISO at the time, I decided to do something REALLY SCARY.  I shot using the full manual setting.  Eeeeeh!!!  Scary!!!  Giving the User absolute control!  Nooooo!

*ahem*

With a nice shutter speed (1/200) and a good aperture (f/5.0) and yes, ISO 200 (because I'm a bit slow on the uptake...), I was able to get noses AND eyeballs In The Same Picture!!!

Now THERE'S a pretty girl!

Look at those eyes!  And that snooter!

More pretty eyes and pretty snooter!

Of course, now I am wondering if I would have been able to get a smaller aperture with a higher ISO (and thus have more shots with more of the face in focus).  Theoretically yes, but since I don't have the firmest grasp of the basics yet, I'll have to try it to confirm it.  But since I knew the light would be good (with the flash), the uncharted waters of the fully manual setting wasn't a total disaster!

Day 62/365.

EVERYONE has a Dark Side!

Heehee.

One of the many things I have wanted to do since I started on this camera journey was to get some portraits of the girls in shadows.  My bedside light casts some great shadows on the girls, but I've never been able to really capture them - slow shutter speed and no tripod (because I'm usually sitting in bed when I try to take the pictures) have led to a lot of unsuccessful attempts.  However, after some emailed conversations with my father and brother, and much reading on the internet, it became clear that that way to go about this was with an off-camera external flash.

I definitely have a lot to learn, but my initial attempts today give me hope that goal of getting photos of the girls in shadows might actually become a reality.

Of course, my first attempt resulted in a very good mug shot for Fi.   A little bright.  And my model is a little surly looking.   But look at that snooter!  What a great snooter!!!  *ahem*

This next photo was actually intended.  I have no doubt that it can be done better than it was done here, but I like the windows in the background, like somehow this photo was naturally lit (it wasn't, but that was the effect I was going for).  Not perfect, but I like it.

In the same room, it was fairly dark, and while this isn't one of the 'shadowy' photos I am 'shooting for', I still like it.

However, THIS photo is definitely on the right track!  I posted this to my crazy dog lady group on Facebook with the comment that I now have photographic proof that Abby has a dark side!  I really like the half-light, half-shadow, but I LOVE that bright eye of hers!   There are certainly things I can do better with this (and I will), but I am really pleased with this photo!

This photo is also along the lines of the 'shadowy' look I'm going for.  I think I'd like to move the flash in a bit so the background isn't so light (and I'd like to move it down, so it's not just the top of Fi's head that is catching the light), but I really like the softness in her face and eyes.

There are some issues with this photo (like the unfortunate location of that wall right behind Abby's snooter), but I really like the soft light but the sharpness of the photo.

Now that I know how to make the flash and the remote trigger work, I have to learn about flash strength and how to compose photos, and all sorts of other stuff.  But that's what makes this all so fun - the stimulating of 'zee little grey cells' to mis-quote Hercule Poirot.

Day 61/365.

Fun with the Remote Shutter Release

Way back when the D70 was more than a doorstop, I purchased a $7 remote shutter release from amazon, because I had read somewhere that this was a 'must have' piece of equipment, and very handy for shots where you've got a very slow shutter speed, so you don't shake the camera by pressing the shutter release on the frame.  Given that I primarily take pictures of the girls (and boldly split infinitives), I don't know what slow shutter speed photos I was anticipating, as slow shutter speeds + dogs = pictures of empty space with a ghostly shape of a dog...  Hmmm.  Now that I think about it, that might be kinda cool....

Anyway, for giggles, I thought I'd try out the little gizmo for some 'family portraits'.

Clearly something has to be done about the light coming through the glass door on stage right...

Not quite a Vermeer, but the right idea.

Of course, when working with models who are paid in cheese and dried lamb lung pieces, you can't always expect strict cooperation.  You can, however, expect spontaneous smoochie breaks.

I don't blame Abby for looking a little shocked - Fi was definitely "taking liberties"!

Definitely good times!  And now I might be able to get a REAL family portrait.  Once I diffuse the light from that door, that is!

Day 60/365.