Pet Photography Project 52, week 28: White Balance for Mood

For week 28 of our pet photography challenge, we are talking about white balance and specifically how we can play with it to create a different mood in our images. This is where being create comes into play and I just don't feel like I am "there" yet with my photography. I spend all of my efforts trying to create a visually correct image and that includes trying to get the white balance correct. White balance in an image is the process of creating correct color balance in a photo so whites are white. Creating correct color balance generally means the neutral tones in the scene are rendered neutral in the photograph, without a color cast. If you take cell phone photos (or photos with a camera for that matter), look at them now and answer this question: do the whites look white? Do they look pink, green, yellow or blue? If they do that's common because getting the white balance correct is hard. I just scrolled through my cell phone pics and I learned 2 things: I don't take very many cell phone photos and when I do, they are either yellow or pink.

There are tools to use in Lightroom and Photoshop to adjust these but as my instructor Nicole Begley of Nicole Begley Photography said at Barkelona, just use a gray card before taking your shots. Then you'll know you have the correct white balance. How many times do I forget to use my gray card..... ?? I won't answer that. :)

So the above photos don't work when I try to adjust the white balance and create a mood so I set out to do that. This is definitely outside of the box for me and outside of my comfort zone. I just don't feel like I have the experience under my belt yet to be super creative with my photography but part of the reason I'm doing these challenges weekly is to step outside the box.

My first dilemma was this: should I keep the camera on auto white balance? Since my subject is a dog, if I adjust the white balance for the entire scene, the dog is going to end up blue, yellow, green or pink and I can't think of a scenario when that works. Below I've used a photo with auto WB and then in Lightroom I adjusted for blue and yellow white balance.

This is a blog circle to next up is Pet Love Photography, serving Greater Cincinnati and the San Francisco Bay area . Keep clicking the link at the end of each post and you'll end up right back here.

Rain, wind and lightning

I hope everyone survived the storm on Friday night and that my fellow pet sitters didn't get too wet from all the rain. That was one crazy storm. I had 3 dogs to see on while I was at Bandit's house, the clouds got really dark and purple and it looked liked it could get bad. Luckily my timing was great and I made it to Scooby's house (the 3rd dog) just as a few big drops of rain hit my car. And lucky for me, there is a carport at Scooby's house that I could pull in. I don't normally park in it but on Friday night I did! I leashed Scooby up quickly and we went out into the front yard. When he was done doing his business, we sprinted back into the house because the rain was coming down in buckets. The wind was blowing around like crazy and it was lightning too.  We waited the storm out inside and then went for our walk after it passed. I didn't realize it was as bad as it was but when I was doing my morning rounds on Saturday, I found this tree and several others that were going to require chain saws.  The other two trees I saw had even more damage but I didn't stop the car and take photos.... I thought about it though! That was a lot of rain and wind! Below is Bandit, giving me his best smile!

Barkelona Day 3 and a puppy named Bimbo

Our photo shoot on our 3rd day of Barkelona was in the evening in a small seaside town called Sitges. Check out these google images if you're not familiar with the town. I loved it and could've spent several days hanging out here. It was about a 15 minute ride from our villa in Olivella. When we arrived in Sitges we were paired up into smaller groups and I was with Joanne Brown of Big Bernese Photography.  Joanne and I got along great during the workshop and we stay in touch and talk on the phone frequently.  She and I are both starting up our photography businesses so we have a lot of discussions about our business models, pricing and most recently on website development. It is so nice to have someone I like and respect to bounce ideas off of and someone who is going through a lot of the same stuff I am right now. Here is one of Joanne's recent photos:

Back to day 3 at Barkelona, shortly after arriving in Sitges, the dogs we would be photographing joined us. I was immediately drawn to the chow named Bimbo and this photo location was the suggestion of Kaylee Greer of Dog Breath Photography. We'd actually spent about 30 minutes photographing him, then we photographed another dog (that'll be my next post!)  We'd photographed a dachshund in this doorway and Kaylee said, we need a taller dog. Bimbo was walking by with his owners and we asked if he'd model for us some more. He did and this is the result.

Every time I see this photo of Bimbo, I get emotional. It brings back all of the emotion from this trip: the memories, the people, the food and the incredible experience that it was.

Here is another favorite of mine of Bimbo. He was so good, especially for a puppy. He was off leash the entire time and occasionally he'd wander of a little so his dad would pick him up and put him back in place. I smile every time I see this photo.

I have a ton of photos of him. Here are a few more.

I don't know why but when I look at photos of Bimbo I get super melancholy. I miss Spain the most it seems when I look at photos of him. Perhaps because I used to have a chow named Bear and I get the same feelings every time I think of Bear.

I miss this dog. I miss this town. I miss all the beautiful doors in this town.... it was amazing. I hope to make it back some day. BARKography in Sitges.... omg!!!!

BARKography

I officially launched BARKography on June 11th and here is the new logo design. When I decided to start a photography division I tacked on photography to See Spot Run and then later learned that the name was trademarked by another photographer. Before that led to any issues, I decided to be proactive and change the name, hence BARKography. Once I decided on the name, the next process was developing a logo. Here is the winning design:

Another attendee at Barkelona referred me to 99Designs.com. 99Designs.com is a site where you can have graphic artists from around the world enter a contest to design your logo. I originally thought I wanted a logo using my dog Moose but all of the designs using him looked like clipart to me.  The original artwork submitted to me was this:

I was immediately drawn to it but I wasn't sure it was exactly what I wanted. After a few days of going back and forth on ideas with the artist, he created this and I love it!  What do you think?

Project 52, week 27: Sky

For our Pet Photography Project 52 week 27, we are taking a break from the book and we have a freestyle theme, sky. Most of you know that my regular job is as a dog walker and pet sitter.  Most days in the summer time, I am pet sitting 7 days & nights / week while my clients vacation. That means I am working during sunrise and sunset and since I've started this dog photography thing, I drive around at dawn and dusk and dream of being in a great location with a dog so I can photograph him. This week with our theme being sky, I decided to make certain that I got a dog in front of a sunrise or sunset. My other challenge with trying to do sunrise, sunset or photography when the focus is supposed to be the sky is finding a location. Charlotte NC is beautiful and a great place to live, AND it is full of trees. Those trees make it difficult to find places where there is a lot of open sky. However I am pet sitting with Ursa again this week and while out walking her I discovered a large, steep hill. Does anyone else do this?? Please tell me I'm not the only one because I immediately thought, "That spot would be a nice place to put a dog for a photograph!"

The night we did this quick session with Jack we were really lucky because there was a breeze so it didn't feel like it was 100°. However even with the breeze, Jack was warm but at 12 years old I think he did great! I do think he was happy to be back in the car in the a/c though!

I had an opportunity with Ursa the next morning to take a few photos of her too.

On those days when I don't have my camera with me, every time I see a great sunrise or sunset I get a pit in my stomach and I yearn to be out with my camera and a dog. Perhaps I am a little obsessed. :)

Remember this is a blog circle and next up is Little White Dog Pet Photography - Sioux Falls, SD. If you continue clicking the links at the bottom of each post, you'll end up right back here. I'm excited to see everyone else's sky shots.

Project 52, week 30: Quality of Light

Quality of light is our topic for week 30 of our Pet Photography Project 52 challenge. As we have over the last 2 weeks, we were supposed to pay attention to the direction of light as well as whether or not the light was shining through our subject or on our subject and we were to access the intensity of the light. I am afraid this particular assignment would have been a better suited for cooler weather. Temps have been hot (95+) and humid in Charlotte. My full time job is working as a dog walker so I am out in the heat every day from 9am-3pm-ish. This past week when I've not been outside walking dogs, I've opted to be inside in the a/c.  The fact that this week we are discussing the quality of light seems rather ironic since I was shooting in lighting conditions I've never shot in before and there wasn't much to assess. The conditions were poor but I made the best of it and I had a blast!! On Saturday, I volunteered for 4 hours for the Humane Society of Charlotte at the Mega 500 Adopt-a-thon. I was the photographer at the "Finish Line." I took photos of each adopted dog or cat and their new family so they'd have their first family photo. It was pretty easy for me to assess the light. I can sum it up in one word: poor.

Thankfully we were indoors in the a/c. Not so thankfully, we were indoors... the quality of light inside the building wasn't great for photography.

True story - I'd filled out an application to volunteer at the Humane Society of Charlotte a week ago and I received a response back on Friday afternoon. I replied back to the email asking if they ever needed a photographer. I got an immediate response back asking if I was available on Saturday (the next day!) I was, so I volunteered.

Now, mind you, I am not an indoor photographer. I do have an external flash for my camera but I rarely use it. I figured if they didn't have me they'd be using their cell phones and I was pretty sure I could do better than their phones.

I met some wonderful people and a dog I wanted to adopt. I did not adopt the dog but I keep thinking about him. My husband even asked me tonight if we could trade our brown dog for the dog I met on Saturday. (He was teasing but crazy Moose has been a bit challenging the last few days. Perhaps this dog walker needs to hire a dog walker for Moose! :) ) To see all of the photos from Saturday. go to the BARKography facebook page: click here to see all the dogs and cats that were adopted. 

Here is a sneak peek.

Next up in the blog circle is Northeast PA Pet Photographer, Elaine Tweedy. Be sure to click the link at the end of each post and you'll end up right back here. Happy Reading!