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?

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.