Post Your Pets!

[MichelleBPhotography]

Scotty by MichelleBurdickPhotography, on Flickr

[cowmao]

A friend wanted "professional" pictures of her dogs, but I said I'd do it for free (practice). The main goal was running towards the camera, but I also managed to capture a "moment" (almost on purpose).

Emmitt the rescue dog.

[DavidEccleston]

Looks pretty good. I'd try to boost the brightness of the shadow range a bit, to help define the eye in the black fur.

Also I find a lot of dogs eyes come out very, very dark, and it doesn't look good. You should be able to do a masked brightness change to the eyes in just about everything (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, GIMP, Lightroom, but not DPP). In Elements I do this as an adjustment layer. First I crank it up really bright so I can see where I'm painting the mask, then I can just drag the slider around until I feel it looks good.

But, yeah, overall, good job!

[cowmao]

Looks pretty good. I'd try to boost the brightness of the shadow range a bit, to help define the eye in the black fur.

I normally don't process pictures more than white balance/exposure. I saw the catch lights from the sun/sky in his eyes and said, "good enough."

However, I do see what you're saying. I tried what you suggested using Elements 10 to boost the brightness of the eyes until I could make out the pupils. I think I might have overdone it, but it looks better after walking away from it for a while. To see everything in his eyes, I had to move the brightness slider all the way to max, but he started looking more like a zombie-dog.

Here's the result using the adjustment layer on his eyes for brightness -- set to 135/150.


Most of my processing is just with DPP, so I wondered how it would look in HDR. Fur looks overly processed, but it brought out the eyes just enough. Well, maybe the fur distracts from the eyes more than the eyes themselves. This is HDR, Art Standard, Saturation down to 40 from 50.


Thanks for the suggestion. Good tip.

[DavidEccleston]

Nice. I prefer the adjustment layer over the HDR. Actually being able to see the shape/shading on the eyeball is a huge improvement over the original. Glad to have been helpful.

[Poik]

Went for a walk last night to try out my new tripod. Took this shot of my dog:


Hot dog in the city by Poik242, on Flickr

[ahab1372]

Great idea, and well done Eric. Nice mix of portrait and cityscape.
Did you take some with a tighter framing as well?

[Poik]

Thanks! Didn't take any tighter than that. Most of the shots I took were 20-30" exposures of the city to try out my tripod. I just decided to try a few shots with him in there and play around with some light painting with my flashlight. It was hard enough to get him to look at the camera and stay still while I shined a light in his eyes . It was an LED flashlight so you can tell that the foreground is quite a bit cooler.

[Kombi]

It's Winter again- just didn't get the time to take pictures when it was warm.. I'll try not to be to repetitive, but essentially for next 6 months it'll be dogs in the snow.

[M_Six]

The boys.