Way back in film school, our professors would hammer a vital rule into our heads:
- Never work with children or pets. -
... and like all intelligent artists, I like to disregard that rule. (Why would it apply to me? I think I know what I'm doing.)
We finally got a sprinkling of snow in Saint Paul and I was excited to dress up the fur babies in winter outfits and shoot their portraits.
Once we got outside, the dogs anxiously ran about to do their business. I used this time to set my camera. I always prefer a low ISO (to reduce the noise in my blacks) and I knew that the dogs would be unpredictable, so I would need a deeper depth of field to keep them in focus.
I decided to use shutter speed to adjust my exposure.
Once we picked up their messes (it's the right thing to do), they wanted to play in the snow.
Of course they refused to look in my direction and were never positioned for a good shot.
Charlie, the Corgi, is much better at following commands so I called her over and asked her to sit on the sidewalk. She was anxious to play with Nugget so she refused to look in my general direction. We also tried to put her hat on her and she kept shaking it off.
Finally, we got her to calm down and she kept the hat on. By this time, Nugget got curious and came over.
My girlfriend Katie asked her to stay, And SHE DID! I quickly focused and started snapping away. I gave a brief whistle and they both looked over at me. YESSS!
I was extremely happy to get this shot and once I got it they were more than happy to return to the snow.
Despite a bunch of misses, I managed to get a couple really good shots.
