Tag Archives: teddy

low-key black and white dog (and cat) photos

Today, on the most low-key of days, I bring you the new Cowbelly low-key black and whites.

Back before I was doing pet photography professionally, and then for the first year or so of my business I worked almost exclusively in black and white; greatly preferring it to color. (Obviously that has changed over time, ha!). Based on these shots below, I may just have to return to the colorless world on occasion.

Cowbelly’s version of low-key black and white photography. Ohhhhh yeahhhh. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below! Anyone can do it- no need to be registered anywhere or even have a website. :-)

FYI: low-key black and white images are those that are mostly very dark (and black) tones, with a much smaller amount of light (and white) tones to define shapes and contrast. True low-key images have very little midtones and are really defined by the striking contrast between the opposite tones. It took me awhile to get these but I think I have succeeded. BTW: I was inspired to do this by low-key photos I saw recently of a motorcycle (or was it a car) in a large studio- they were gorgeous. :-)

Ah yes, a fave of mine as well below.

I do realize that these last ones are not low-key b/w’s because there is as much light as dark, but I had to throw in some of Teddy since his brother Breyer’s images pepper this post. Teddy is sort of a high-key/low-key medley. 

Most expressive eyebrows on a dog ever.



Teddy & Breyer sneak-peek

Teddy- yellow lab- mom’s dog. Breyer- chocolate lab- daughter’s dog.

update- I realized the sentence above may be confusing to some. The ‘mom’ is my client, the ‘daughter’ is HER daughter. Not MY mom and MY daughter. I have a mom- a great one- but no daughter. Or son. Just a dog. ;-)

Even though they live many many miles apart, these two boys are still best buddies. It seemed only fair that during the shoot if I took one type of shot of one boy I should duplicate it with the other. And being labs they were all fun and super easy to work with. I wanted to stay there shooting them all day.

We had an AWESOME shoot yesterday and I will post more images from our session next week. I can’t wait to share some of them with you! Wait till you see the black and white processing I did on Breyer’s images. My favorite black and whites to date.