Under the Blue Sky

Welcome to week 41 of our 52 Week Professional Pet Photography Blog Circle. This week’s topic is  somehow interpreting “Under”.

I’ve been working on a little “project” recently with the MSPCA Nevin’s Farm where I teach dog training classes and also volunteer photographing adoptable animals.  The shelter is working on designing a sympathy card and asked if I’d be willing and able to help capture a photo.  The criteria was to show a dog-human bond relationship, but with the human being “unidentifiable”.  My first thought was a “silhouette” image outlining both the person and the dog.

I’m usually at the shelter mid day and it’s ALWAYS bright sunshine!  Ideally I would have LOVED to get a sunrise or sunset silhouette, but decided that I might be able to get a good deep blue sky that would work for the image.  Finding a volunteer at sunrise might not be the easiest task!

I met with Morgan, behaviorist and head of our dog training program, this past week.  She brought her sweet 13 year old pooch, Jerry, to join in on our project.  I have a session scheduled with them in a few weeks, so this was great for Jerry to get used to me.  He gets a little “worried” around new people and likes to take his time getting know someone.  Super smart boy!  He did awesome!  Here are the images we came up with and they fit perfectly into my blog post this week of  “Under the Blue Sky.” I had to push the limits with my camera.  These were taken with a shutter speed of 1/8000 – the highest my Canon 5D MKlll will go.  I used my 24-70 mm lens at f/2.8.  I still had to do quite a bit of darkening the darks and shadows in post because of the super bright sunlight.

The third image I decided to keep that little bit of the shelter in the image.  It was a challenge to find an area raised that I could get low and shoot up to get the complete sky in the background to form the silhouette.  The perfect hill that was my plan to use was being leveled by bulldozers that morning – haha go figure!

These images make me smile, knowing the two of them and the amazing bond that they share!  I can’t wait for our photo session to capture even more images of these two sweethearts!

Thank your for stopping by our blog circle.  Next up in our circle check out some amazing work by I Got the Shot Photography, Serving Northeastern PA and surrounding areas.  Click on the link at the end of each post and follow along with us!  Have a great weekend!