Collars and Bridles

I spent the morning at a barn today; it was great to practice with some subjects other than Nikita :)

I think this first shot is my favorite. I added in some sun flare in post production, and I like the effect it added. I had problems with the lighting overall since the shadows were so harsh, but I like how this one ended up.

Tamron 10-24mm Lens in Pet Photography

I have been seeing some great work done with wide angle lenses in pet photography and I plan to rent some to test them out. Before I went to try those out, I wanted to play around with the wide angle lens I already own. I always felt that it would distort too much and give that "fish eye" effect, but it was worth a try. Overall I was pretty impressed. While my 70-200mm lens is a dream for action shots and zooming in, the benefit of the wide angle lens is you can stand right in front of the animal and get the whole body. In order to decrease the degree of disproportion, I tried to keep her in the middle of each photo. Staying at 24mm also reduced the impact.

These shots were taken with my Tamron 10-24mm lens, on aperture priority. (Of course the appeal of the other lenses on my list is a wider aperture, I prefer a more shallow depth of field.) I am also shooting RAW images.

Here is the before and after as I learn more about Adobe Lightroom. I didn't want to do too much because the point of this wasn't to spend hours in post processing, but just see the impact of the wide angle. I like this whole body shot.

ISO 200 ~ 24mm ~ F4.5 ~ 1/1600

I feel like you can definitely see the distortion in her nose/muzzle as it is disproportionately long.

 I like this one, because I was standing toe to toe with Nikita and yet I got her whole body and background. I feel like her body is much longer than in reality, but still not clownish.

ISO 200 ~ 24mm ~ F4.5 ~ 1/2000

 The lens didn't do too poorly with action shots either, although most of them were much too far away to be useful- that is why I have the 70-200mm :) 

ISO 200 ~ 24mm ~ F4.5 ~ 1/2500

December Days

If you ask me what I want to do on my birthday- I will tell you I want to hang out with Nikita, take some photos and play with new things in post processing. I am happy to report I am spending my 27th doing just that!

This week I watched some great tutorials on pet photography and Lightroom, so I wanted to try it out. I also came across some wonderful other photographers that inspired me to go out there and capture some canine spirit. Nikita is always such a great model and she knows that when she sees my camera, we are going to go play so I think she always looks happy. 

Here is the before image:

1/500 ~ 170mm ~ F3.5 ~ ISO 200

Taken with {what else} the 70-200mm lens

The after image using what I taught myself this week, as well as the other shots:

 Here is the above photo with some "snow" - one thing I can't really photograph in Phoenix!

Santa Paws

I volunteer with the Southwest White German Shepherd Rescue seeing as I have a soft spot for GSDs. I am on the hunt for other rescues, hopefully closer than 40 miles, that I could spend time with. The organization hosted a Santa Paws event. The holiday spirit was very apparent as dogs and people alike mingled and chatted with Santa.

{Fast} Family Shoot

The Fast Family asked me to shoot their holiday photos this year, and what a great afternoon! The family truly has fun together and you can see it in all the images. Merry Christmas!

Happy December 1st!!!

King of the Jungle

First of all, the Facebook page is live, so if you stumble across my blog, please like my page as well :) 

What an adventure! I traveled to Out of Africa, about 1.5 hours away on the perfect day to capture these shots. My favorite was definitely the tigers and there were so many of them there! I knew that the species is just about extinct in the wild, but it turns out there are more tigers in Texas than there are in the wild; there are only 3200 left. I really hope we don't lose this majestic animal. A couple sites I found to help the tigers are here and here.