Jumping Dog [Explored]

As a dog owner and photographer, I'm never without a willing (for a reward) subject to take pictures of.  George my 2 year old Sprocker Spaniel has given great service right from when he was a pup (one of his puppy pics has been sold by Getty many times).  He's done Studio work, Outdoor work, been composited, off camera flashed and loads more besides.

His latest modelling session involved an idea I had to get him to jump straight up at the camera for a quirky shot.  It worked out quite well and I posted a couple of images onto Flickr.  For me these were work in progress, it was the first time I tried it, and as it was a dull day, high ISO was needed resulting in more noise than I wanted.

However, the citizens of Flickr did not agree and both images got "Explored" and one of the images picked up over a thousand hits in just one day, which is very good for me.

You can see that image here.

I thought I would put together a short video of how it was done, there's a couple of tricks I discovered along the way. Hope you enjoy it, George certainly did.

I would love to see other peoples attempts.

A New Toy

This week saw the arrival of my latest gadget a device called a Phototrigger from http://www.phototrigger.com.  I’ve wanted one of these devices for a while now, ever since I tried water droplet pictures (see Union Jack pic below), which although was reasonably successful, always felt a bit hit and miss.

There are a few devices out there but I settled on this particular one as it had the features I wanted (guess what, I want more now!) and was at the price point where it enabled a dabble in the technology without the need for a second mortgage.

In summary, the unit can trigger the camera or a Flash or both, when a specific physical situation occurs.  This could be a sound or vibration, a change in light levels or something interrupting its laser beam (cool, it has a laser!).  It will also function as an intervalometer for time lapse work should you wish to try this (I have an idea for this one!).

As always with new kit there is a learning curve that you have to climb before you can start getting creative.  Therefore my first attempts have been to get to learn the way things work with simple subjects.  In the first instance, garden birds.  Since they flee very quickly when they spot a human (or the dog), if I can master the technology I should get a few nice shots.  

I decided to use the microphone as a trigger and you can see the setup in the picture below. 

Did it work ? well, sort of. 

Nothing whatsoever wrong with the equipment, it triggered fine when birds (or my dog) were in the right area.  The issues I had were all in the setup of the camera.  Have a look at the picture below, no laughing now!!

As you can see, it triggered fine, BUT the framing is way off.   When I set zoom and focus point (I set focus manually so lens didn’t have to waste time finding focus, I may need to adjust this strategy).  Obviously I underestimated the size of the birds that would feed.  Also, though you can’t see it here but the original was quite dark.  This is because I set the camera up on full manual as I wanted to dial in a constant fast shutter speed to freeze motion, I think shutter priority would have been better as the camera can change Aperture to maintain light levels.

Still, making progress up that learning curve, I can only improve!

Cheers, Peter.

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Should you tell?

I had the idea for a picture of my dog George sitting in autumn leaves, and as he's from a shooting background, a dead Pheasant on the Ground in front of him.  Lots of autumnal browns and yellows, and a brown dog as well as the plumage of the Pheasant.

But the chances of getting George to sit still on his own, let alone with a Pheasant just in front of him was pretty remote, so I had to resort to other tactics.

I ended up shooting a background of leaves at a local park, and using OnOne softwares excellent Focal Point 2 (onone software) to provide a realistic focus blur to it.

That evening I set up a couple of Studio Flash stands with softboxes, a table full of collected leaves, and the dog sat in the middle.  The following night I did the same with a Pheasant my wife had obtained from a local farmer.

Then it was a task to cut out the dog and Pheasant in Photoshop, assemble the lot and colour balance the various parts (see below).

Now I quite like the final image, BUT it has polarised opinion once I've revealed how it was made, with one individual claiming "oh thats fantastic" before I told them, and "I don't like it now" once I'd let on.

Its as though the magic was gone for him because I had invented a reality rather than captured it, and somehow this was wrong.

Which poses the question, if you've created an image like this should you tell people its not real?

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