Three dog pictures

[Laika]

Any thoughts on what I can do to improve these pictures?

Laika

Aztec

And Aztec again...

 

[osirus]

Love the first one..
something in my head tells me to try to rotate a tad to the left..
not sure why.. but it does.

not sure what you could do to the 2nd one

3rd ones nice,
are you able to bring out some of the details in the darkness some?
dog kinda blends into the background.

 

[tirediron]

Input per req:

1. I really like this image, and the mood, my only thought is that what I assume is the dog's tail is resting on his muzzle and is slightly confusing to the eye. It also doesn't seem quite level to me.

2. This isn't a good pose for a dog; the foreshortening of the muzzle puts it out of scale to the rest of his body. Animals and people are generally best shot at eye-level; get down and shoot toward him, ideally with a 3/4 profile and him looking at you. In this pose, he appears to be laying down on a very steep slope and I keep wondering why he doesn't slide down. Good use of the sheet(?) to make an even background, but watch the wrinkles.

3. Nice idea, but at least 2/3 stop under-exposed, and as mentioned, much of his detail is lost in the background. I would suggest reshooting this one, set the dog further away from the background (to allow for a shallower DoF and a softly focused background) and the use of a fill light image right to illuminate this back.

Some nice work here, but with room for improvement. I'm not an animal photographer, but I feel that generally they're best captured out of doors, rather than in studio portraits.

Just my $00.02 worth - your milage may vary.

~John

 

[photographyaddict]

You don't need to do anything! they're gorgeous! the final one was the BEST! But all good as well~! That dog is soooooo CUTE!

 

[Laika]

Thanks so much for the help!

Better or worse?

Another one taken at the same time:

The last two pictures were both taken outdoors...I still have issues with outdoor lighting, and haven't any idea how to set up lighting indoors.

The first one was taken in my living room, and looking at it as someone that has never seen my dog, I realize it could be quite confusing. She is curled in a complete ball, with her head resting on her tail. The hair in her face is actually the hair from her rump. I will try to straighten it a bit this afternoon.

I will take Aztec out again in early evening and try to play around with getting the backround better, he is within the branches of a pine tree that fell in the driveway in the recent wind storm. I might have to spread them out a bit to give some room so the branches are immediately behind him?

Hopefully I will improve over time. Thanks again.

 

[Raze]

I love the first one - so cute!
The second one doesn't look sharp enough to capture my attention.
The third one I thought was nice but too dark so I had a go at lightening it (Hope you don't mind, it says your images are ok to edit).

Then I saw your second post, I like the second pic better, the colours look richer. (I just roughly did a shadow/highlight adjustment on Aztec to show more, he was a little lost).

I'd love to see these shots again with a play on the depth of field.
Beautiful dogs!

 

[Laika]

The edits you did are quite lovely, I will have to see what I can do to duplicate result you got.