When a pug-loving pet photographer runs into a pug dog at the park named ‘Potato’, do you really expect her NOT to take his picture? Come on now.
World meet Potato. He is from Idaho.
P.S. If you are waiting on an email from me please don’t despair! After being sick for the past two weeks I am now buried in emails. I am taking them chunks at a time and hope to be caught up in the next day or two. Same goes for print orders. I promise I will get there! 
Kaiya’s mom sent me her story in her 2nd email to me and it melted my heart. I was so looking forward to photographing her and the day couldn’t have been more beautiful weather-wise. We shot at Discovery Park, one of my favorite locations in Seattle for outdoor dog photography. As you can see the day was just about perfect.
We were on the steps of the abandoned church at Discovery Park, and Kaiya was so cute in thinking we were going to go inside.
Boy, when Kaiya has something to say, you better listen! 
She is so deeply loved, and so very happy. I love this shot.
Do you notice anything unusual about this girl?
She has three legs.
Here is Kaiya’s story, as told to me by her mom:
We are celebrating the fact that Kaiya is fully recovered and can enjoy life on three-legs. We’re hoping to get photo thank you cards made and sent to the dozens of veterinarians and specialists (both in CO and WA) involved in saving her life and helping with her recovery. She was so sick for many months…in late 2007, (in Boulder, CO) she survived an attack of an immune disease (called IMHA), that has a very high fatality rate. It took several blood transfusions and a complex drug regimen to fight the disease, and as a result of that harsh treatment, she acquired an opportunistic fungal infection in her foot. Then over several weeks, she was weaned off the IMHA medication, but in order to stop the aggressive infection, the vet team at WSU amputated her left rear leg in February. Then she endured several months of anti-fungal treatment post amputation and has had a long rehab. We want to have some new memories of the recovered Kaiya for ourselves and to share with everyone who loves her.
I feel so honored that they chose me as their pet photographer. What an amazing story and what a fighting spirit.
As you can see, Kaiya doesn’t let the loss of one leg slow her down. She runs faster than most dogs with 4 legs.
Some Before + After + processing stuff below.
I have been eating crow since I first downloaded Adobe Lightroom. In the past I came to really dislike Photoshop, and even after I downloaded CS3 didn’t want to use it unless I had to.
I used to think that processing was a total waste of time, and that if an image needed a lot of work it was because it was a bad image, and that actions were for photographers who were trying to fake a good image with software.
I STILL don’t use Photoshop except to prep blog posts and design art, and still STRONGLY advocate getting a great shot in-camera, and am still very much ‘meh’ when it comes to actions, BUT, I have found a renewed love of processing through Lightroom. I now spend loads less time and have much more fun processing a session than when I used PS. Oh and then Lightroom 2 came along recently and blew my mind wide open. I think all of the gals in my first workshop know how much I love this program after nearly kissing my laptop screen while using it. Actually, love isn’t the word- ADORE is.
I feel sorry for those photographers who have snubbed their noses at LR, saying “oh it’s just a glorified version of ACR Bridge- just fancier looking”. Ok, if you say so, hee hee hee.
(this is like saying that a subaru and a porsche are the same car because they share the same engine style)
Wanna know more about Lightroom 2? Download the trial. It will change your life.
Before & after below.
Image capture information:
Shot in RAW with Canon 5D with 24-70mm L-series lens. 100 ISO, 35mm, 2.8, 1/1000 sec, autofocus (all points), aperture priority with -1/3 EV, evaluative metering
LR2 sliders:
exposure +92, fill light 14, blacks 15, brightness 53, contrast 48, clarity 45, vibrance 40, saturation -15 (I always reduce saturation), highlights +25, darks -27, vignetting: amount -50, midpoint 0
Note- these settings will produce much more extreme results on a jpeg file. Just lower all of the intensities at least halfway and see how it looks. Go especially light on the blacks and highlight settings. You may also need to selectively decrease the saturation on certain colors. Here I had to way desaturate the aquas. And they are still bugging me.
And also, this look should be used on special photos- it’s a bit too fantasy-like for your average shot. Or maybe use it as a standard processing setting but do away with increasing the overall vibrance, and just tone it down a bit.
Have a well-exposed RAW file? Try this recipe on it and see if your image doesn’t ‘pop’ too.
Left- after photo. Right- SFTC (straight from the camera, yes I know I am not using SOOC, but I’m a rebel like that)
same settings and processing as image above except shot at 1/1600 sec with no exposure compensation and exposure increased in LR +1.17. Treat meet mouth, mouth meet treat.
Left- edited image. Right SFTC.
This shot is why I could never be a successful people photographer. It didn’t occur to me that looking toward me meant looking directly into the blazingly bright late afternoon sun. Can you see the pain on their faces? Sorry guys!! (although, Kaiya doesn’t seem to mind, lol)
I have been getting a lot of requests for people + their pets photography lately, or at least, requests for a few shots of the owners with their dog. It’s interesting, I have never done much at all with people in the past. I am happy to experiment but I always make it very clear to my clients that if it’s a portrait shoot they are after then they would be better off with someone else. I do not profess to have good people photography skills! (As is evidenced by the previous shot). But still, it’s good to stretch one’s limits to see what one is capable of. And even if I don’t love, love love the people shots, it’s my client’s desires and wishes that I hold closest to heart.
2 seconds after this shot she gave her daddy a big schlurp on the ear. Can’t you see it coming on?
“where are the squirrels Kaiya? where are they??”
Here she sits and looks for them in the tree.
Hope you guys love Kaiya as much as I do! She is an awesome girl.
Henri’s mom’s last name is Bean, and I think it is the cutest full name for a dog, so now I just call him ‘Henri Bean’. His mom calls him ‘H’ for short- it’s his movie star title. It’s totally fitting because this boy poses like an old Hollywood film star.
This is two different shots below, but I just realized it almost looks like it could be the same one. If Henri Bean was a contortionist, lol.
How cute is H?
Henri Bean is just as sweet as he looks. And one of the most well-behaved dogs I have ever worked with.
Color-correcting all of the images above was a challenge (I’d like to use another word here but I’m trying to keep my ‘G’ rating on this blog). The sun was so beautiful, and so low in the sky, and cast this gorgeous intense golden-orange glow on everything it touched. That’s not so great for a dog who already has reddish-orange fur. BUT, I decided to use the light to my advantage for the last few shots. I only wish I had taken more.
That’s Puget Sound below, the body of water that downtown Seattle sits on. Beyond the sound you see the Olympic Mountain range. Talk about a gorgeous night. I wish everyone reading this could join me for a stroll through the park. It’s breathtaking.
Some of you may wonder if I am tiring of doing shoots at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Not at all! I am acutely aware of the fact that soon that gorgeous golden glow, the bright green grass, the vivid blue skies and white fluffy clouds will be gone. I am milking this summer for all that it’s worth while it’s still here. With such a gorgeous setting just blocks from my studio, and clients wanting to shoot there, as long as the weather holds, it will be near the top of my ‘favorite locations’ list for Seattle dog photography.
There is nothing funnier than a big, lumbery, happy black lab IMO. And Samson totally fits the bill. This is Sam with his little buddy Cooper, who was just lucky enough to be staying over with Sam for a few days. When I saw Cooper’s face I had to get him in on the photography action. Sam didn’t mind at all. In fact, Sam doesn’t seem to mind much. He is the epitome of laid-back.
That’s Cooper there on the right. See how I couldn’t resist snapping some photos of him? Oh just you wait….
Some of you may recognize Sam from my old blog. Sam’s mom received a birthday gift from her super sweet boyfriend in 2007, and they invited me to go ice skating with them at that time. They were going skating and then for food + drinks. I had to say no because I had a ton of work to do. This time they invited me to go lawn bowling with them after our shoot. Again, too much work to do. Next time I WON’T say no- there is nothing more fun than drinking and lawn bowling, IMO! (ok, I’ve never been lawn bowling but it sounds like a blast. Sheena what’s the haps with the team??).
Heyyy, how’d SHE get in there? Rarity of rarities, I brought Fergie to this photo shoot. I am in love with Sam, and I thought Fergie would be too, and I just had to get the two of them together. I hoped that Sam’s mom would be ok with it, and felt confident that I could do my job well with Fergie there, so I decided to go for it.
I don’t know if it was love at first sight, but Sam DID pull a Junepug and start walking Fergie around by her leash, which I was so surpised by it I forgot to take pictures of it. Well, except for this one. Notice the leash wrapped around the Fergs’ right foot? hee hee. Right after this we took the leashes off and they went nuts. Yep, they definitely love each other. I think a date at the dog park is in order.
Now you tell me- how could you NOT photograph this little guy if you were there?
Seriously….
I can give you proof that I am a nice person. While we were at this fountain, a man who was exercising by jumping on and off the edge of the fountain, actually FELL IN. Everyone around us grabbed their cameras and starting taking pictures of the poor guy while he struggled to get out, clearly mortified by what just happened. Did I lift up my camera and start snapping away? No way. My parents always taught me to ‘do unto others’ and my heart went out to him (talk about embarrasing), so of course I wasn’t going to take advantage of him for my own photography kicks. I admit I would make a terrible photojournalist. I like dogs more anyway. They don’t get embarrassed. Fergie gets shy when she is pooping sometimes though. I digress.
Check out the ’sugar string’ drool from Samson.
Ahhh, the lovely Puget Sound. I can practically smell the low tide.
Fergie (L). Samson (R). Stick- the same.
I don’t know if you can tell, but this photo below was massively processed. From time to time there are situations I find myself in photographically that I just don’t know how to capture. Well, in the window of time that I have anyway. Like this shot in the late evening with a still bright sky but a very dark, black dog, half lit by the sun, and half in shadow. Increasing the exposure to get the detail in the dog loses the blue in the sky, yet exposing for the sky loses the shadow detail in the dog. I had it on manual, used spot metering and metered off the midtones in the ground, then recomposed and focused on Cooper. I didn’t even have time to change the aperture (which was set on f/8.0- ok but could have used wider), because I saw that there were dogs walking toward him on my right and I had about 1.5 seconds to fire off a few shots before he moved. A neutral density filter would have helped but not exactly in the way I wanted. Fill flash would have also helped, or even a stationary light, but alas I didn’t have my flash on my camera because I didn’t think I’d need it. But even if I did, this shot was also taken at 70mm, and then also cropped way down, because I was pretty far away from Cooper when I took it. I don’t know my flash well enough yet to know if I could have gotten the lighting effect I wanted at that distance. Plus I knew if I crept in closer he would move, so I did the best I could with what I had available at the time, which is really, the best that you can do when shooting dogs on location outside! You have to be ready for anything that happens and do the best that you can. See below for the original image.
Doctored in Lightroom and Photoshop:
Original, unmodified file. Would have been perfect had it been a profile shot. I would have just darkened the blacks and increased the contrast. I may have one of him like this in profile- I’ll have to look.
This is funny. I decided it would be cute to try and get a group shot of all three dogs together. Not an easy feat mind you, but the outtakes that came from trying this were totally worth the challenge. Funny stuff.
And lastly, the piece de resistance, the shot that had tears streaming down my face from laughing the first time I saw it. Ah, dogs are so funny.
I actually have an honest-to-goodness sneak-peek today!
I have had so many clients to proof this summer that getting their galleries online AND a blog post within 7 days has been impossible. I have been able to get the galleries online by my deadlines but not the blog posts.
But between Christina and I we have been rocking out the work this week and have gotten a ton accomplished so I am catching up, yay! I just have 3 more clients to proof this weekend and I am all caught up with getting galleries online, whoopee!
These guys are Fang- mini daschund, obsessed with his plush hot dog, Ramses, an amazing old boy with a super sweet story of rescue, and Rupert, one of the coolest cats you will ever meet.
Rupert. Love him.
Ramses. Very wary of strangers. Not a surprise considering he was chained to a tree and beaten as a puppy. He is 12 years old now and has a wonderful home with parents who love him deeply. Love the relaxed smily face on the left. I was talking to him in my happy voice, and he put his head down and his ears back and smiled and half closed his eyes. Dogs are so great.
Fang is a funny little daschund. Totally play-driven just like Fergie. Also great at doing meerkat impressions.
Only boy cats who are very secure with their masculinity can have red painted nails. (Ok, they are just caps, but they still look pretty hilarious IMO).
You guys remember the daschund in that Petco/Petsmart commercial? Yeah well, Fang isn’t like that. It would take a miracle for his toys to last long enough to need to trade them in for a new one. Just like Fergie he is into ‘gut and destroy’.
i has a hot dog (L). no you can’t have it (R).
i has a hot dog parts on my tongue (R). has good flavur.
Cat on very dark stairwell + handheld at 1600 ISO = a challenge. Helps when cat is stoned on catnip.
You wanna see the funniest thing ever?
Fang cleans the sliding glass door with his tongue. I wish I had a dog that helped out with the housework. hee hee hee hee…
