During the summer months, Belltown Dance Studio holds public Salsa dancing events at Seattle locations such as Alki Beach and Westlake Park. Organizers spread out a portable dance floor and provide a nearly non-stop selection of Latin dance music. During the past two Alki events, the sun was shining and the dancing was hot!

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.

Several weeks ago I spent a few hours with Sora taking pictures on a beautiful November day. I posted some pictures from that session in a previous blog post here. Sora has late-stage insulinoma and is enjoying spending the holidays with her family. Saturday I had the opportunity to create more memories of Sora and the other members of her family. Here are some of those images…

Here’s Sora wearing a Christmas ribbon…

Zoe is watching Sora keep her blood sugar level up by eating honey and peanut butter…

Mom watches from the couch while Sora chews on the squirrel…

This is Zoe and Rex, Sora’s brother and sister. Zoe is a 5 year-old angel, and Rex is a sweet heart of a dog.

A week ago I teamed up with Old Dog Haven to make some holiday photographs. Proceeds from the sessions went to Old Dog Haven. Here are some of my favorites from the day.

Today I had the extreme pleasure of photographing Casey and Zoe. These two senior citizens live with their mom Catherine in the Madison Valley neighborhood of Seattle. Casey is a 13.5 year old mix of “…maybe sheltie and spaniel, and possibly some golden,” says Catherine. While she’s not 100% sure of Casey’s heritage, one thing she knows for certain is that he is a very sweet dog. And I can attest to that. He spent most of the session wanting to get closer to me so that I would pet him and cuddle.

Zoe is a 9 year old chihuahua, who is missing her right front paw. Zoe was a bit standoffish at first, but her curiosity soon won and she investigated what Casey and I were doing. It is clear that this little girl is full of personality.

Despite Casey’s advanced age, he still looks like a puppy…

Zoe has good looks and a charming personality…

Group shots…

Two more…

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.

Last week I had the opportunity to photograph some of the staff at Muttley Crew Cuts, a West Seattle grooming and daycare establishment. Of course, the staff I photographed were the four legged members. You can find out more about them at http://www.muttleycrewcuts.com/home/. Hopefully I’ve captured some portraits that will end up gracing the walls of the lobby.

Here are some of the employee pictures…

This afternoon was absolutely gorgeous. When I got to Enatai Beach Park in Bellevue, the sun was strong and low in the southeastern sky. There were only few people in the park, but a bald eagle soared over nearby trees possibly looking for migrating salmon in the lake. I was there to photographed Sora, an 11 year old European Boxer, who has late stage cancer.

Sora’s mom, Michelle, founded AHELP, the Animal Hospice and End-of-Life Palliative Care Project, after previously losing two boxers to cancer. More about Michelle and AHELP in future posts. We have had Sora’s photo session scheduled for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, in the past few days Sora has taken a turn for the worse. She had a seizure last night, and today it took quite an effort for Michelle to get her to the location. Once there, Sora was beautiful and happy, and the light was perfect. We knew her energy would fade quickly, so I worked fast to get as many shots of her as I could. Unfortunately, playing at the beach took a lot out of Sora, and she became very stressed and disoriented from the effort. The next half an hour was tough on all three of us as Michelle worked to calm Sora enough to travel the few blocks in the car from the beach to their home. Once home, Sora was able to relax and seemed to enjoy the roasted chicken her mother served her.

It was a tough afternoon for all of us. But I think if Sora could tell us, she’d say that it was worth it.

Here’s Sora…

In late October we had what I thought was going to be the last nice day this fall. Since then we have broken the record high temperature for November with a 76 degrees. Holy cow! Anyway, this day in October was just beautiful. And as usual, there were plenty of dogs out with their owners on Alki Beach. The sun was low in the south and kind of harsh, but the beauty of these fine dogs shined through.

This gorgeous samoyed was chilling with his peeps…

A yellow lab puppy was enjoying the day…

Look what I can do!

A wire haired fox terrier out for a stroll…

A couple of good looking Shiba Inus enjoying the warm fall day…