"Baxter and Charlie"

dpolston

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These are my parents Christmas presents and my new brothers! I had the gear in the back of the truck (from some recent corporate portraits) and since my family was invited to dinner there, I thought I'd practice.

So... should I add "pet portraits" to the portfolio or what?

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$Puppies 8x8 copy.jpg
 
Try raising the contrast, other than that, bleeding awesome shots!
 
Those two are beyond adorable! Like how you can see the mottled pigmentation on the little black & tan guy's ears.
 
Thanks. That's Baxter and he has a very unusual colored fur (almost purple in places). He is the rowdy one.
 
great shots, cute little guys ya just gotta love these pics
 
*bump*

I'm bumping to get a little more feedback on this one. I'm getting the "cute puppies" comments, but the only real critique I had was on contrast (which I tried and it didn't work well. That is a solid black fur material. And yes... that pup has a purple tint to his fur... which is weird!)

Personally, I think they're nearly perfect photos (although the nose on the brown one looks ever so soft). Taking these two together was like trying to take a photo of a bag of worms. They were very playful. But what do you ecpect from a 2 and a half month old puppy!?!

Honestly, aside from the cute factor, are these high quality "calendar worthy" portraits? Your comments might determine whether or not I add pet portraits to my session work. My wife and I had fun taking these.

BTW: THANK YOU for the cute puppy comments! (I didn't want to sound ungrateful.) =o)
 
haha , well yeah they are damn cute,
but hey these are puppies , and I never saw one who wasn't cute :)
adding extra contrast won't do the trick here like you mentioned ..
I would add a adjustement layer and overlay it , and pull back the opacity ...,
and to finish burn where you want more contrast ...
but I agree as these are almost perfect and can go right on a postcard ...
 
It is very hard to improve on them. They seem a little soft to me and I think they'd be sharper if you increased the shutter speed but it could be a result of resizing them for the web.
(I'm having bad probs with sharpness lately on my 350d+24-105L and the only solution seems to be to up the shutter speed)

Could they be calendar shots - Definitely. Should you put "pet portraits" on your portfolio - yes if you like the job, they are definitely saleable shots.


and finally...
They're so effing cute!!! (I tried not to but it had to be said)
 
okay... they are adorable. =o)

I think that it might be the resize thing (the original RAW image was cropped as a 4" by 8" image at 300 dpi, which is a 16.4 meg tiff file). I cut this one hard to get it to fit TPF.
 
Have you try increasing the contrast but masking parts that would blend with the background?

I don't really like the black background, one of the puppy is black (or near black). Black on black doesn't work well in my opinion. A white background would be much more effective.
 
Awww how adorable!

I like those shots, very well done altho I think the background would look good if it was a little more dark.
 
(I think it's funny how subjective photos are based on the last 2 post... "white would be better" and "needs to be darker" lol)

No... I haven't tried to mask the background layer. I'll give that a shot. The black material (fur) I had was in the bag at the time (referring to the OP). I use that material to eliminate the light bounce from things to deaden the shot (mostly tabletops). I didn't want to use my larger backdrops because I didn't want them to "poo" on them (neither will fit in a washing machine).

I do need to get some other colored fake fur for these shots (maybe a light gray and a tan color?) This pet thing still makes me laugh. If someone were to tell me 10 years ago, "Hey, have you considered "pet" portraits?" I would have laughed at them. Who'd a thunk it?
 

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