Street photography is a popular pastime for amateur and professional photographers alike. It is often done with smaller, rangefinder cameras that allow the photographer to go unnoticed while they capture people going about their daily business. The images can be very powerful. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a master at street photography. His black and white images are some of the most iconic of the 20th century.

My doggy style street photography is not as stealthy or candid as was Cartier-Bresson’s. The camera rig (see below) weighs around 10 lbs, and is rather imposing to both small and large dogs. Confident dogs are curious and will come up and sniff the camera. while less secure dogs will shy away and even bark at the camera rig. Either way, it often results in some great expressions from my subjects.

When I’m out photographing dogs on the street or beach, I always ask the owner’s permission. I also try to hand out my business card and offer to send them an image or two of their pup.

For those of you who want the technical details, this is the camera rig I use when doing to street photography projects. I attach my Nikon D700 to a monopod and turn it upside down. I tape a SB800 flash unit to the monopod, as well as a Rogue Lightbender. Cables for the TTL flash and the shutter release and there you have it. On this outing I had the flash compensation dialed to -1 stop. Next time I will probably go -1 1/3 or -1 2/3. I think the flash was just a bit too hot.

I’d love to hear your feedback. Anybody out there doing anything similar?

Today was another nice day at Alki Beach, so I headed out to make some photographs. This time I only took my Lensbaby Composer with the double glass optics on the D700. While I’m essentially a pet photographer, I do like to stray a bit sometimes. This was one of those occasions. I thought I might do some black and white processing when I got back, so I shot with that in mind.

Here are some of the B&Ws I ended up with.

The image below shows how difficult it can be getting the lensbaby in focus. I had hoped the bolt on the right was going to be tack sharp.

 
I’m not sure which treatment I like better of the two shots below. What do you think?

This little guy was left on this post by somebody with a sense of humor.

 
More of Alki’s charm.

 
And I couldn’t leave without photographing at least one dog.

When I started up Northwest Dog Shots, I had lots of photographic and pet experience, but I didn’t know much about Photoshop or other post-processing software. I owned Photoshop and Lightroom, but I hadn’t really been able to do anything except scratch the surface with these powerful applications. I needed to get some training, because there was no way I could learn Photoshop on my own. I did an extensive search for PhotoShop training in the area because I knew that I’d do best with in-person classes. Then one day I saw a tweet from a fellow pet photographer who said she was going to start a 6-month series of FREE Photoshop classes. I thought, free is good, so I followed the link to CreativeLive’s website.


creativeLIVE ( creativeLIVE) is owned in part by Chase Jarvis, a highly regarded commercial photographer and director in Seattle, and is revolutionizing the way creative subjects are taught on the web. creativeLIVE’s business model is simple—make everything free. All of the classes that creativeLIVE produces are presented live via streaming video at the time they are produced. While the classes are being streamed live, creativeLIVE is also recording HD quality audio and video, which is later edited and packaged into downloads . These downloads are available for purchase at very reasonable prices. creativeLIVE is able to do this due to the huge audiences it attracts for the live events. A certain percentage of the viewers are willing to shell out a few bucks in order to view the classes at a later date, or even pause in the middle.


With Chase Jarvis’s involvement, creativeLIVE has been presenting master classes by top photographers and other creatives. These masters of their craft have included Vincent LaForet, Zack Arias, David DuChemin, Jasmine Star, and most recently, Tamara Lackey. And December 2nd and 3rd, Jeremy Cowart will be presenting Experimental Portraiture. And it’s all FREE if you watch live.


I am blown away by the concept behind creativeLIVE. Chase Jarvis calls it the democratization of media, and it is changing the way other training providers are looking at their businesses. And we the consumer of this training will only benefit as a result.

This past weekend in Seattle was just gorgeous. The sun was out, temps approached the 60′s, and the dog parks were packed with dogs and humans. Unfortunately, during the middle of the day all that bright sun meant harsh lighting. But that is when the dogs were out. So I grabbed my camera and my low rig and headed out for some magic.

About the low rig. I’ve been thinking about ways to get low to the ground without having to crawl around on knee pads. I also want to be able to run with the camera low and have the dogs trail behind. I spent a lot of time searching the internet for a ready made solution to my problem. I considered The $14 Steadycam as an option and nearly purchased all the parts and pieces to make one. Then it occurred to me that I was thinking inside the box— that the camera needed to be right-side-up in order to take a picture. When I was able to wrap my brain around the idea that it didn’t matter to the photograph if the camera is right side up, the solution was simple. And I could put it all together using components I already had. My low rig consists of my camera with a cable release mounted to my monopod. I grab the monopod by the foot and hang the camera upside down. Later, I right the images in post-production. Simple.

Reactions to my rig were mixed: “What the …”

This pug looks sternly disapproving, while most dogs were curious about the low rig and the camera shutter noise.

“Whatchya got there?”

“Go ahead, kick the ball. I dare ya.”

Some dogs were intent on licking my 14-24mm lens, which has such a curved front element that you can’t attach a filter. Yuck!

The next step will be to add some sort of noise maker like a pneumatically controlled squeaky toy to the camera. That should be fun!

If you’ve never been to a dog agility trial before, you might find it to be a loud, frenetic affair…especially if it is held indoors. And here in the Northwest, all agility trials during winter months are indoors. Dogs who are on the course are often barking out their frustrations to their handlers. Some dogs express their joy and excitement at full volume with the sound reverberating off of the walls and ceilings. Add to this cacophony the black and white streak of a Border Collie running at over 20 mph and the deer-in-the-headlights stare of a beginning mixed breed dog who is acting like he’s never seen the weave poles before, and you have the Extreme Agility Team (EAT) sponsored agility trial at Argus Ranch in Auburn past this weekend.

So there I am in the middle of this circus on a mission to capture images of each dog’s performance that the owner simply cannot resist buying. Now wait a minute. Photographing dogs with black faces going 20 mph in poor indoor lighting–how’s that going to happen? Ta Da! The Nikon D700 to the rescue. Okay, bare with me. I’m going to get all photo-geeky on you for a moment. I absolutely love this camera. Using the D700 and a Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR lens, I set the ISO to 6400, use a neutral colored chair to set the white balance, and manually set the exposure. Then I shoot around 5000 images over the two days using the best technique I can muster. After culling out the blurry images due to subject/camera movement and missed focus, I usually end up with around 40-50% keepers. Using fixed settings on the camera allows me to use presets in Lightroom to do batch processing on the high number of images. Check out some results below.

Here is a beautiful Belgian Tervuren in mid jump.

Wee, the Chihauhau, loves agility.

This Border Collie is moving.

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s Super Boston!

Max is patiently waiting for a treat from his mom.

Yes, even Great Danes can do agility. Believe it or not, this giant girl loves to dive into the tunnels.

Last weekend I took my new Lensbaby out for a test drive. I left all my other lenses at home, and headed to a nearby AKC dog show. I was using the standard “Double Glass” optic, which when focused correctly provides prime lens sharpness in the sweet spot. However, getting that focus proved to be quite a challenge, as my 51 year old eyes do not see as well as they used to. The Lensbaby is a manual focus system, and if the diopter on your camera’s viewfinder is not dialed in perfectly, the images end up looking like the sweet spot is a myth. I was lucky and got a few keepers. Just don’t look too closely.

This was an adorable Westie puppy.

He looks bored.

This girl was just here to watch the show dogs.

Another Westie getting primped for the ring.