This post is long overdue. Fergus and Lola are two very special apricot standard poodles whose parents had me over several months ago to capture their sweet kids in photos. There was a bit of urgency to us scheduling the shoot as Fergus had been diagnosed with cancer and had been losing energy. He has a tumor on the side of his face, and they were worried they wouldn’t have much time left. Anytime I hear ‘cancer’ I pretty much drop everything and get there with camera in hand. I really will put everything else on hold if I am able to, and go photograph furry loved ones with a terminal diagnosis.
The good news is that the last word was that Fergus is doing well! He eats homecooked food and couldn’t possibly be more loved by his parents. And I am sure having a nutty, entertaining, sweet sister like Lola helps his cause. 
Lola tormenting her poor older brother.
Lola wasn’t sure about the balloons at first but when she figured out they were fun she was totally into it.
Fergus looks beautiful with the blue sky and colorful balloons. He is such a sweet, gentle dog.
I love this shot of Fergus. It makes me feel like I am there at our shoot in September, not in frigid December weather. Baby, it’s coooold outside.
Fergus on the left; Lola on the right. These shots pretty much sum up their personalities.
This next shot has to be my favorite from our session.
And, for your viewing pleasure, a few before and afters. All processed in LR2, then saved for web in PSCS3.
By the way, after some extensive experimenting with saving for web settings, including saving different ICC profiles, sharpening and not sharpening and saving as different quality jpeg settings, I have come to the conclusion that ’saving for web’ seriously degrades the files, and if I ’save as’ 8 quality jpeg the files look just like I intend them to, and are only slightly larger. The difference in quality is really striking. See below.
The top image is saved as 8 quality jpeg, and looks like I want it to; the bottom image is saved for web as maximum quality, bicubic sampling, NOT saving the ICC profile (saving the ICC profiles looks so much worse).
See the difference in the door, and the color balance and exposure? All from saving for web. I feel a little silly that I am just now realizing this but I was just doing what was recommended for this blog design. I know you don’t want huge file sizes on already very large images, as it will slow the whole blog down, but I’ll take the few extra kbs to gain the better quality anyday.
I knew for awhile that I was having issues with images not looking good in terms of color and exposure shifts and pixelation, but I didn’t realize just how bad until my little experiment. Of course, I did this little experiment AFTER processing and saving the images above, lol. Ah well, look for better looking files from me from this point on. Thank god I don’t have this problem with my prints!
