First Love Connection

I received great news last night! My first foster dog/model was adopted!!! I am not sure if I had anything to do with it, but what a happy ending! I am so happy for this love match.

Single Ladies

I am so thrilled to begin my new project. I am a day foster volunteer with Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. I take adoptable dogs out of the shelter for a day of hiking and fun, and of course, they get a full photo shoot while they are out! I am hoping to capture their personalities and they will find perfect families :) Here are my first two single gals for the project "I'm a Keeper, Are You?"

Snow Day for Nikita

Nikita loves the snow! Although she didn't understand me telling her why we couldn't have snow all the time - but Phoenix doesn't really support a white Christmas! Good thing snow is only an hour or two away. 

Nikita in Prescott, AZ

Happy New Year! For the first shoot of the year, Nikita was the model in Prescott, Arizona. Of course she will always be my favorite model, although 2014 holds big plans for JAK Photography :)

These images were shot with my new 50mm 1.4 lens and edited with my new Lightroom 5 and Photoshop.

Japanese Garden

 Sunday I spent the day wandering around the Japanese Friendship Garden in Downtown Phoenix. It was a beautiful and peaceful spot that I hope to return to. The koy fish are so used to people feeding them that they swarm up to you when you reach the water's edge, and they beg for food very similar to a dog. Some of the fish had to be larger than a chihuahua too.

I am pretty proud of how I pulled this image together in Lightroom/Photoshop. It was a really hard exposure to capture. 

On this image I wanted to pull out the details and make the colors pop. I loved the range of colors and contrast in the fish swarming around food. I don't think it is super dramatic, but it makes the image a little more dynamic than the before shot.

Canon EF 40mm f2.8 in Pet Photography

I got a Canon 40mm 2.8 as part of a bundle and haven't really used it. Since I am in the process of cleaning things out for the new years and taking inventory, I wanted to test out what I have and see if it would satisfy my needs so I could postpone spending more money. Nikita enjoyed playing ball in the dog park while I tested the equipment.

I was pleasantly surprised at the speed of the lens for the action shots, although I prefer a more shallow depth of field. For the portraits I really wanted a different aperture, but it did yield sharp photos. Of course I was fighting midday sun in these.

50mm f1.4 Lens in Pet Photography

I rented the Canon 50mm f1.4 lens as it will most likely be next purchase. I wanted to test it indoors as I will be using it for Christmas tomorrow with the family, and I am pretty pleased with the results. I am still working on getting "tack sharp" photos in more of my shots, and I did notice a significant improvement by using a prime lens. 

I also played around with making collages in Photoshop, although I really want to use a collage software to make it faster in the future. I saw a recommendation for this one but it won't work with Photoshop Elements 10. I am also fiddling with Lightroom 5, and I will definitely have to watch some tutorials, but I like the impact to my workflow so far. These images were also all shot in RAW, so I think I am fully transitioned from JPEG.

Left: ISO 400 ~ 50MM ~ f1.4 ~ 1/4000

Right: ISO 400 ~ 50MM ~ f1.8 ~ 1/125

It was getting a little darker out and I gave Nikita her Christmas Eve gift {which lasted approximately 3.2 seconds!} so I chose to bump up the ISO... not sure if I would do that again. My goal was to make the eyes tack sharp so I also chose a slightly higher aperture; generally I feel I achieved sharp eyes. 

 Left: ISO 1600 ~ 50MM ~ f2.2 ~ 1/100

Top Right: ISO 1600 ~ 50MM ~ f2.2 ~ 1/100

Bottom Right: ISO 1600 ~ 50MM ~ f2.2 ~ 1/100