Funnest weekend ever! (Large share)

tirediron

Watch the Birdy!
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Just finished my favorite weekend of the year; "Pets with Santa". This year we were supporting Vancouver Island Compassion Dogs, an organization which specializes in providing service dogs to Veterans. We went five hours each on Saturday & Sunday, and shot just short of 250 sessions. For those of you doing the math at home, that's an average of roughly two minutes and 25 seconds per session. All in all, it was a frantic weekend, and great fun and we raised over $4000 for an outstanding cause.

As always, comments, critique and suggestions always appreciated.

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#7, cat is not digging the session. Lol
 
I'm going to PM you my mailing address, please put princess butterface into a box and mail her overnight. thanks.
 
Anything with a pet in it is great in my book but I have to agree with Darrel that #2 shot is the winner of the set.
 
O_M_G, #2 for the win! That CAT! Priceless!
Disapproving cat disproves. Strongly!

Very nice, John! BZ to all involved.
Thanks Brian! :)

#7, cat is not digging the session. Lol
Nope... I'm guessing someone found half a mouse in their slipper the next morning!

I'm going to PM you my mailing address, please put princess butterface into a box and mail her overnight. thanks.
:lol: Sure!

Anything with a pet in it is great in my book but I have to agree with Darrel that #2 shot is the winner of the set.
Cheers!

God Bless You John.
Thanks Gary... I suspect I've still got a way to go before I'm out of the red though!
 
Such a wonderful thing you folks do there, and we benefit by seeing these great photos!
Must be exhausting. Who works harder, the photographer or Santa?

I love many of these. #2 FTW!
 
For those interested in quick BTS.. This is the way the lobby looked when I arrived for my recce a couple of days before:
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and this is the way it looked when I had things where I wanted them:
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Most of the people from this group had never done this sort of thing before, so I took on most of the set-up & arrangement. Because this is high-volume shooting, the key is a streamlined path for the clients and their humans. They come in, register, "donate", walk by the swag table and then on to the set. Once the shoot is done, "Thanks for coming, next!" and off we go again; for most of Saturday, it was normal to have anywhere from 8 - 10 clients waiting.
 
Such a wonderful thing you folks do there, and we benefit by seeing these great photos!
Must be exhausting. Who works harder, the photographer or Santa?

I love many of these. #2 FTW!
Probably about 50/50... he's done at 4.00pm, and I have to work another 6-8 hours on process, but he gets more bumps & bruises...
 
Re #4, it's so hard for me to pull detail out of black dogs like that. I usually end up pushing the shadows to the point it looks unnatural. Any tips?
 
LOVE these. Especially the crooked santa glasses in the iguana shot. Just seems so appropriate. Job well done!
 
Re #4, it's so hard for me to pull detail out of black dogs like that. I usually end up pushing the shadows to the point it looks unnatural. Any tips?
Yep (and I sincerely do NOT mean this to sound belittling or rude), but the trick is to get the exposure right. If you look at the right-hand C-stand in the BTS "after" photo, you can just make my light meter dangling from it. Even though I've done this for probably ten years now, and it's a VERY simple light set-up, I still check the whole scene with my incident meter to ensure that I've got it within <1/3 stop across the whole thing. That said, I still raise the blacks a hair and drop the whites about an equal amount (around 10 points on the LR slider).

LOVE these. Especially the crooked santa glasses in the iguana shot. Just seems so appropriate. Job well done!
Thank-you! :) The glasses weren't intentional, but a particularly rambunctious golden lab broke them about mid-afternoon!
 

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