Saturday was "picture day." I've really been trying to book a lot of sessions to get practice with a variety of dogs, people, lights and settings. The forecast called for snow on Friday and clear skies on Saturday, so I booked three sessions. An 8 am outdoor session with Logan, my favorite malamute, a 10:30 am indoor session with Joey the 8 week old Maltese-Poodle, and a 1:00 pm outdoor session with Sadie, one of the graduates of my Basic Training class.
Remember that scene in The Weather Man where people are throwing all kinds of things at Nick Cage's character? I would never assault someone else like that, but the weather was anything but cooperative yesterday and it was very disappointing!
I left my house at 7:30, and immediately noticed that the sky looked ominous and the weather was less than delightful. About five minutes away from Calgary, the snow started to blow across the road. The closer I got to the park, the darker and gloomier things looked.
The session was even less productive than I had anticipated. The grey, flat light was confusing for my camera, and the wet snow melted and formed puddles around the dials in seconds. I threw the camera into P mode (I know, cheater!) so that I wouldn't have to adjust anything and could just snap and cover it back up. Not a good idea - the poor camera had a panic attack and couldn't handle it. Manual exposures were the only ones that worked out. I crossed my arms over my camera to keep it dry, and ended up missing a lot of shots that way. An umbrella or cover for my camera has suddenly moved up on the wish list!
Still, it wasn't a total loss.
Logan is young, energetic and full of that fabulous Northern breed personality. He howls with a wonderful "woo woo!" He gallumphs like a puppy, and his face is so sweet and friendly. I really wanted to capture a bit of that in the pictures. I was so excited when his "mom" agreed to let me take his picture. This one of him sitting in front of me is my favorite from the morning, despite being mostly blurry. I thought I'd missed it - a split second after I hit the release, he was up and away, heading off to find new smells.
This is an uncorrected picture of Logan in the grass. The exposure is what I was dealing with all day - I had the aperture open as wide as it would go, but it just wasn't enough. A slower shutter would have given me a more correct exposure, but a more blurry dog. Most of the pictures are pretty blurr-ific as it is. This picture is actually not bad once corrected, but doesn't say much about Logan's personality. This is the standard "here comes the dog", without much passion or energy. Not my favorite.
Logan in profile. I really like this picture, even though it again benefits from correction. Don't you want to snuggle him?
You do. Admit it. How could you resist that face?
We're going to schedule another session for a brighter day, with a more vibrant background. Expect to see more of Logan at the end of May!
At the second session, the light again caused problems. Joey spends his time in a lovely, window-filled kitchen. When I was there for a training session, I fell in love with his adorable little face and was so excited about the fabulous light in the kitchen. His "mom" generously agreed to let me come back and snap some pictures. Of course, on Saturday that light was much more muted, and I really could have used a reflector, speedlight or some other way to get more light onto Joey. The other problem we had was that Joey was terrified of the camera! Anytime the auto-focus whirred he turned away, and I had much better luck in manual focus mode.
Did he slay you with the cuteness yet?
First attempt at using a prop. (Except, it wasn't the first. The first was an absolute disaster with a bright orange ball - Joey was a blur of beige against the beige tiles with a Bright! Orange! Ball! capturing the entire focus of the shot. So we are pretending it didn't happen.)
Flowers. I'm not sure what I was trying to do here, which is probably why the shot didn't work out. I had an image of Joey in the flowers, which he is, but somehow with a bit more direction. Obviously I need more practice with props.
I love this picture. I tried all sorts of things - piling the flowers on top of him, putting him on top of the flowers, various combinations thereof. While I was busy fiddling, he got busy chewing, and I got my favorite shot of the session.
"I know I am delectable, but please! Contain yourself! Don't eat me!"
You'll be seeing more of Joey, since I plan on going back to get more snuggles (and pictures) from the little cutie!
The snow was coming down harder and the sky was even more threatening, so I rescheduled the afternoon session. Sadie will be making an appearance soon!
Salsa with a tree. I took this photo after spending some time at Katy Regnier's photo blog - she is absolutely amazing when it comes to using big, bright backgrounds to highlight the subject of the picture. I am much more comfortable working with close-ups and frame-filling faces. Obviously I still need to work on the background thing - it's difficult for me to see the subject within the larger background and then frame and expose it properly. It is outside my comfort zone. But isn't that the whole point? The stretching, testing, pushing of growth and learning?
Salsa, back-lit. I love back-lighting. This is not the best back-lit photo of the session, but it's the only one I'm going to post here. The best one is very unfortunate in that it's gorgeous, and her face looks great and it's perfectly composed except for the bar that seems to be extending out from each ear, kind of like Frankenstein. It sucks that Photoshop is so expensive - it's near the top of my wish list, but it'll be a few more months before I can afford it. 
Smile!
The end.
