my dogs!

[keight]

Of course the first thing I do when I get my camera is take pictures of my dogs, who are my whole world to me and my partner.

Here's a few I was able to snap (please be gentle, they're my first shots playing around with the photography triangle!)

[KCBrecks]

Didn't Michael J Fox do the voice over for the first one in Dogs and Cats? You have really caught the cute with that one.

[Loose Canon]

Hi Kait! Welcome to the Forum!

Congratulations on on your first shots and starting off by jumping right into the middle of the Triangle!

I hope in advance you will enjoy the journey (okay, addiction) you have started! You have a great leg up on it!

Your Beagles are cuties!

In the first shot the exposure looks pretty good to me. Nice detail, depth of field and you nailed the focus in the eyes.

Though I know it isn’t always controllable, a suggestion would be to watch your background. It’s pretty well blown. Now, no one knows better than I do how it is when you are trying to deal with your camera, the pups running around, and then have other stuff to watch too. So just a suggestion for next time out.

Second shot? Really? This pup is on High Alert! Eyes fixed, tail up! Looks awesome!

Now, if I may suggest? And in light of my previous background comment? If you have some software available to crop this shot, not only would it bring your pup in closer to us so we can enjoy this puppy more, but would also eliminate some of the upper fence row with the people, well, fence row, and all that is up there that isn’t the pup. Place more emphasis on the puppy. And a good shot to crop leaving some “looking room”.

If you can do this out of the box, I can’t wait to see the next batch Kait.

[Donald]

Well done, Kait. It is all about practice, practice, practice. And you are taking the right approach by concentrating on one aspect of skill development (exposure). If you try and take it all on at once (exposure, composition, focusing) then you end up just getting confused). But, as Terry says, you've nailed the focus on these.

What settings did you use on the camera for these? What shooting mode were you in (e.g. Auto, Av, Tv, M, etc)?

[rpcrowe]

Great looking dogs...

I agree with Terry except, that I would like to add that the color balance on the second shot might be improved a bit if you have a program like Photoshop Elements. I tweaked the color balance in PSE-10 using Edit; Enhance; Adjust Color; Remove Color Cast and then placing the color sampler eyedropper on the white of the dog's coat...

Although I will frequently use a WiBal card as a target for color balance adjustment, I have found that the white coat of a dog can do a very creditable job as a white target. After-all, what I want in the color balance of an image of a dog with a white or partially white coat, is for the coat to look white. Using the coat as the target solves that problem...

[djg05478]

I ♥ beagles!

The gents have provided all the technical feedback in regarding your photos. Ditto what Donald said..practice, practice, practice....Keep clicking! I would guess that I have taken thousands of pictures of my dogs and have kept, maybe, less than 1%, but its the only way to figure out what works and what doesn't.

[rpcrowe]

I agree with Debbie. Digital is wonderful in that there is no guilt for shooting loads of images. And I don't have to keep the bad ones like my Mom did in a shoe box full of rejects...

[ggt]

Beagles!!!!! I love Beagles. I've had a couple in my lifetime. All very sweet, cuddly, loving, stubborn and ALWAYS HUNGRY.

I love the expresson on the first picture. I'd crop the second as much as possible. The eyes look clear, but are so small, I can't see them well and it's the dog we want to see.

When I started here on CandC, many wonderful posters gave me advice on capturing my dogs here: Newbie--PLEASE help with solid color dog pics. All the advice has turned out to be very, very useful.

I try to remember that with kids and pets --it's the eyes that make the difference in the picture.

have fun!

[keight]

thank you all so much for all the great feedback! I'll definitely have to keep practicing and hope to get better shots soon