Rosey in a hurry
May, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photo on a winter walk with our dog Rosey on the golf course behind our house. She, like most dogs, loves new fallen snow and we had almost a foot for her to enjoy.Time
The photo was taken at almost 5pm in the evening in late December. Rosey is such an obedient dog. She runs around doing her doggy thing and then when I call, she dashes back to see me like I have been gone for years. I did that several times so had several chances to get it right.Lighting
Obviously, at 5 in the afternoon in December in Colorado, the sun is very low in the sky. In this photo, it is at my back and helped put the highlights in her eyes.Equipment
Sony Alpha 77m2 with a Tamron 70-300mm lens zoomed out to 300mm. Handheld with no flash. 1/1000 at f5.6Inspiration
I have admired a lot of tack sharp dog action photos on ViewBug and had attempted them in the past with mixed success. Rosey and I were both antsy from being inside the house watching the snow fall for a couple of days. When the sun came out, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try again. The snow slowed her down a bit making my job a bit easier and the untouched new snow made for a clean bright background against her black fur.Editing
I increased the exposure a bit to whiten up the snow, cropped it and that is it.In my camera bag
I started out long ago shooting Minolta film camera's and when I switched to digital, stayed with Sony so all my old lenses would still work. I have 2 bodies, an Alpha 77 and an Alpha 77ii. I love zoom lenses, so in addition to the Tamron 70-300mm, I also have the Tamron 150-600, a Minolta 35-70 and a Tamron 16-35. I only use a lightweight tripod since I tend to move around a lot and have recently started experimenting with an adjustable neutral density filter that goes from 3-8 stops.Feedback
Practice, practice, practice, and high speed shooting. The Sony has a 12 fps setting that I just love for shots like this. You can pre-focus on a specific spot and wait until your subject approaches that spot which helps when a fast subject is moving toward or away from you, or you can track focus which the Sony does exceptionally well. I used the latter technique for this photo and like I said, made several attempts. You will get a lot of blurry photos until you perfect the technique, but keep at it and you will eventually capture the one you want.
