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Description
I was out shooting photos of my cousin's son jeffrey the other day. They just got a new puppy and wanted a photo of it while it was still young. I snapped a lot of photos trying to get one with the both of them in the frame and so I could see some facial features as opposed to the backs of their heads. we all had a good time though and I think a few of them turned out pretty good. I saw flaws in every photo, but I was still pleased with the outcome considering I could only shoot them for about 10-15 minutes before jeffrey didn't want his picture taken any more. You work with what you have eh.

I was using a longer lens to try and separate them from the background and to stay a little further away from them so's they could do their business. The longer lens also threw a shallow depth of feild into the mix creating the shoot a little harder still. It was kinda hard trying to keep them both in the same frame, but it was rediculously hard trying to keep them in the same focus plane. I didn't want to stop down any more though, because I like the effect of shallow depth of feild. It took a lot of moving around on my part to keep the focus plane parrallel to jeff & the dog, as both of tem would not sit still.

We kept jeff occupied pretty well by showing him how to pick blueberries. This seemed to work well for a while. The only thing we had to work with then was trying to keep the dog close to jeff long enough to get the shot. when we broght the dog closser to jeff they would interact a little, then jeff would turn back to his blueberry picking and the dog would start chasing my cat Maggie. (who you can see modeled in several places in my gallery.) She saw us down in the field and decided to take a stroll down to get in on the action. Maggie is a complete camera hog. as I was framing up shots, she would walk directly into the scene and ruin it and both te dog and Jeffrey would change their attention to her. What a diva.

with all that said, I'm 99.9% possitive that my alltime favorite subject to photograph in portraiture is children. They are so natural and it's easy to capture many different expressions in the matter of 10 minutes. If all I did was shoot kids, I would lead a very fullfilling life. (I should have phrased that sentence differently...)

Okie, composition wise:
There wasn't much in terms of composition here. I was just trying to keep the camera on jeff and the dog and frame it up so they were in the frame as comfortably as possible. It didn't really work out that way though. The shots where they were in the frame and no limbs were cut off, were the frames where they weren't looking at the camera, or were crying or whatever. The expression won over composition again in this photo. I would have liked to tilt the camera down a little bit so's I didn't cut off the dogs feet, but what can you do. I was using autofocus and was pretty confined in my framing capabilities. the 20D-30D's autofocus points are so horribly placed in the camera in my humble opinion. they should have at least put 4 in the corners where the 3rds intersect. I was trying the good old "focus recompose" method with the AF point in the centre for this shot and pretty much every portrait I take. blah blah blah. there were a lot of words there for a whole lotta nothin goin on in the comp. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I usually always shoot children or small animals at a very low angle. I am usually on my stomach shooting them to get my camera at their eye level. It looks so much better than If I just stand there and shoot down at them like every parent I've ever seen taking pictures of their kids. You all probably know that, but I'm just throwing out there incase someone didn't. then HEY you learned something from this rediculusly long post.

Photoshopness:
I just did a simple vignette in the adobe camera raw dialogue
In Photoshop I just duplicated the layer and applied a gaussian blur to it with a radius of 16.4 and then set that layer's blend mode to soft light. and reduced the opacity to taste.
After that was some sharpening and that's about it. not too much.

I think that's it for this photo. I'm not really quite sure why I turned comments off in my last few submissions. I think I had a reason, btu it has left me now. Maybe I had mid life crisis spell or something. Christineism told me it seemed pompous for me to turn comments off, so I guess I'll turn them back on. I'm not trying to seem above anyone. I think I was just viewing these photos as a learning tool for anyone who would be interested and I didn't feel like I needed to gratification or critiques or something. I dunno. Feel free to comment away on how bad I am and that I should just donate my camera gear to charity if you wish. Have a great day and thanks for viewing.

Description
I was out shooting photos of my cousin's son jeffrey the other day. They just got a new puppy and wanted a photo of it while it was still young. I snapped a lot of photos trying to get one with the both of them in the frame and so I could see some facial features as opposed to the backs of their heads. we all had a good time though and I think a few of them turned out pretty good. I saw flaws in every photo, but I was still pleased with the outcome considering I could only shoot them for about 10-15 minutes before jeffrey didn't want his picture taken any more. You work with what you have eh.

I was using a longer lens to try and separate them from the background and to stay a little further away from them so's they could do their business. The longer lens also threw a shallow depth of feild into the mix creating the shoot a little harder still. It was kinda hard trying to keep them both in the same frame, but it was rediculously hard trying to keep them in the same focus plane. I didn't want to stop down any more though, because I like the effect of shallow depth of feild. It took a lot of moving around on my part to keep the focus plane parrallel to jeff & the dog, as both of tem would not sit still.

We kept jeff occupied pretty well by showing him how to pick blueberries. This seemed to work well for a while. The only thing we had to work with then was trying to keep the dog close to jeff long enough to get the shot. when we broght the dog closser to jeff they would interact a little, then jeff would turn back to his blueberry picking and the dog would start chasing my cat Maggie. (who you can see modeled in several places in my gallery.) She saw us down in the field and decided to take a stroll down to get in on the action. Maggie is a complete camera hog. as I was framing up shots, she would walk directly into the scene and ruin it and both te dog and Jeffrey would change their attention to her. What a diva.

with all that said, I'm 99.9% possitive that my alltime favorite subject to photograph in portraiture is children. They are so natural and it's easy to capture many different expressions in the matter of 10 minutes. If all I did was shoot kids, I would lead a very fullfilling life. (I should have phrased that sentence differently...)

Okie, composition wise:
There wasn't much in terms of composition here. I was just trying to keep the camera on jeff and the dog and frame it up so they were in the frame as comfortably as possible. It didn't really work out that way though. The shots where they were in the frame and no limbs were cut off, were the frames where they weren't looking at the camera, or were crying or whatever. The expression won over composition again in this photo. I would have liked to tilt the camera down a little bit so's I didn't cut off the dogs feet, but what can you do. I was using autofocus and was pretty confined in my framing capabilities. the 20D-30D's autofocus points are so horribly placed in the camera in my humble opinion. they should have at least put 4 in the corners where the 3rds intersect. I was trying the good old "focus recompose" method with the AF point in the centre for this shot and pretty much every portrait I take. blah blah blah. there were a lot of words there for a whole lotta nothin goin on in the comp. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I usually always shoot children or small animals at a very low angle. I am usually on my stomach shooting them to get my camera at their eye level. It looks so much better than If I just stand there and shoot down at them like every parent I've ever seen taking pictures of their kids. You all probably know that, but I'm just throwing out there incase someone didn't. then HEY you learned something from this rediculusly long post.

Photoshopness:
I just did a simple vignette in the adobe camera raw dialogue
In Photoshop I just duplicated the layer and applied a gaussian blur to it with a radius of 16.4 and then set that layer's blend mode to soft light. and reduced the opacity to taste.
After that was some sharpening and that's about it. not too much.

I think that's it for this photo. I'm not really quite sure why I turned comments off in my last few submissions. I think I had a reason, btu it has left me now. Maybe I had mid life crisis spell or something. Christineism told me it seemed pompous for me to turn comments off, so I guess I'll turn them back on. I'm not trying to seem above anyone. I think I was just viewing these photos as a learning tool for anyone who would be interested and I didn't feel like I needed to gratification or critiques or something. I dunno. Feel free to comment away on how bad I am and that I should just donate my camera gear to charity if you wish. Have a great day and thanks for viewing.