Shine on, little guy!
a super cute chihuahua offers his help with the Christmas decorating.
a super cute chihuahua offers his help with the Christmas decorating.
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Dec, 2013Views
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Awards
Outstanding Creativity
Superb Composition
Top Choice
Absolute Masterpiece
All Star
Peer Award
Magnificent Capture
Genius
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photo in my home, with a simple, black backdrop draped over a table and up the wall behind it.Time
It was mid afternoon, but not really relevant since I took the photo in the basement and there was very little ambient light.Lighting
I used one speedlight with a softbox a little above and at a 45 degree angle to the dog. I wanted as much light as possible to come from the LED lights, because the photo was for use as my holiday greeting card.Equipment
The photo was taken handheld with a Nikon D3200, Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 lens and Yongnuo YN-560II speedlight off camera with a softbox.Inspiration
I wanted a photo of my dogs to use as my holiday greeting card. Originally, I had the two of them wrapped up together in the lights, but my female dog, Becca, looked really miserable and worried, like she thought she was in trouble. This little fellow (Delgado) doesn't care about anything and will happily pose all day long, so I decided it would be best to just have him in the photo.Editing
Post processing was mostly to add some contrast and a lot of work darkening the background which had a lot of light spilling on to it. Eventually, I just painted over the large parts with black and then took the darks way down with a curves layer to mask around the lights and the dog.In my camera bag
These days, I mostly shoot with a Nikon D7100. If I am doing portraits, I will have my 24-70 mm f/2.8 lens, a couple of speedlights and a reflector. For landscapes and wildlife, I will pack my 70-200 mm f/2.8 and my 10-24 mm f/3.5-4.5 lenses. Sometimes, I bring along my D3200 so that I can just switch cameras and not have to change lenses in the field. I usually have a circular polarizer and a Canon macro filter that screws on to the front of my lens and is handy for taking close up of interesting flowers and tiny creatures.Feedback
In future, I would try to have the dog much further out from the backdrop, because it was way too brightly lit and I had to do quite a bit of work to darken it. A trick I have learned for getting my own pets to be in photos is to set everything up and start taking photos (even if it's just of a plain backdrop). Then, when they walk into the scene to explore, I keep telling them to go away and pushing them off the backdrop. Suddenly, there is nowhere they would rather be. This works especially well with cats.
