Blog Ring

Urban. Meaning: in, relating to, or characteristic of a city or town. To me this means tall buildings of brick, sprawling landscapes with various houses and people arranged in close quarters. Not quite where I call home.

As luck would have it, the Dogs of MSP were planning a meet up at Flat Earth Brewing Company in St. Paul. Dogs of MSP (MSP = Minneapolis/St. Paul) is a group of dog owners who meet up at local dog parks, businesses and breweries as well help each other out with training, treats and food and general dog questions.

And it turns out that it was an EPICALLY perfect location for the theme of urban. The buildings, formerly of Hamm’s Brewery heritage, were tall, imposing brick structures, with boarded up or broken windows, scattered assortment of graffiti, with Flat Earth Brewing Company nestled in behind a pair of large doors in an arched doorway.

 

In common event fashion, I mingled with the dogs inside who were enjoying the company of others while their owners drank and shared stories. One IPA consumed, and my status as “THE” treat lady continued to grow and soon I was I favorite amongst the dogs. The indoor lighting was dark and dingy, so I meandered out of the bustle to photograph a collection of dogs outside in the even, overcast light.

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Ruger (doberman) & Sophie (border collie) – Ruger, the doberman with impeccable manners rocking a Bad Tag “Cuddle Monster” tag. He wasn’t interested in modeling at first, but when the treats came out his inner super star did too! Sophie was a charmer, well trained and has been working on her sit pretty.

 

 

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Kira – my friend Katie’s pittie! I’ve photographed Kira before, in fact she was one of the dogs in the Tri County Humane Society’s calendar that featured guys from the rugby team. She’s a pro at modeling and master of drool.

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Nia – We met and instantly she was giving me kisses! She learned quickly that I had treats and I would dole them out for eye contact and a wiggle of the that little corgi butt!

 

 

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Winnie (black pug pittie mix)  & Money – Winnie has an adorable almost underbite and some mega impressive ears! Money (who I mistakenly called Cash) was a laid back older gent who enjoyed the treats I was happily doling out.

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The bulldog boys. These two stocky gents are both two years old with laid back personalities. And they were mega drool factories!

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Sidney – I adore Sidney! We met a couple years ago at the Twin Cities Pet Expo. Her mom follows me on Instagram, and I follow them in return and get to see the antics of Sidney and her pittie brother George. She totally had my number and knew I was the treat lady. Plus she poses like a pro!

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Maple – Maple is a mega adorable mini goldendoodle. Her mom has followed me on Instagram and was my introduction to the Dogs of MSP.

Rain (husky pittie mix) – Eeeek! An adorable puppy!

 

Next up see what urban is to Jodie from Pawtrait Purrfection, serving Pets and People in Ipswich, Australia.

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Green…. uh… the heck is that? The lovely landscape of MN has been in transition. From sorta snow to no snow. No snow means golden brown grasses. We came upon on the first day of spring, and those lovely green blades of grass didn’t get the memo. Especially in time for this week’s theme of green.

Hmmmm… let the creative gears start rolling. A meandering walk with Bender to the small baseball fields yielded green from the dugout shelters. For a town who’s school colors are green and white, there really isn’t a lot of either around the schools!

Axle and I waited for a lovely golden hour (golden hour + golden brown grass is stunning but not green!) then adventured out to the little local hockey arena. No greens, but on the backside of the parking lot was a mature pack of pine trees.

 

 

There’s a local John Deere farm machinery sales and service center that Axle and I stopped at. All of the machines are green with yellow accents! A great fit for the theme of green! Also there’s a country song with a line “In John Deere green” (cue the song) that always plays in my head when I think John Deere and green…

And a bonus bit of green (yes it doesn’t have a dog in it…)

Next visit Linda of DogShotz Photography serving Indianapolis Indiana to see how she captured green.

HDR was the theme for the 52 Week Project. HDR = high dynamic range.

Typically this is an editing process used for static subjects (for me I use it on landscapes and classic cars) where at least 3 different exposures of an image are created. In a 3 image HDR one image is overexposed, one under exposed and the last is neutral. The exposures are combined to create a more evenly toned image. It is very challenging to photograph animals for an HDR because they tend to move. If they move enough you can get ghosting. This is where the images don’t align. Keep an eye out below, there’s a couple of images of Bender with minor ghosting (one he has multiple tails!)

Bender and I meandered to the abandoned part of the bike trail where a quaint bridge is. The sky was very moody and the whole scene had a lot of dynamic range (dark ground, light dog, dark to light texture in the sky) which means it was perfect for an HDR image!

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This before and after shows how much evenness in tone can be achieved with an HDR. Processed with a custom preset in Photomatix I made called “moody car warmish” haha! Also shows off leash removal magic!

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Can you spot the differences?

We shifted away from the bridge for more sky and a sense of landscape. The presets I have for HDR images tend to “push” the image while keeping it closer to a natural look. A fun thing that does tend to happen, esp with skies earlier in the morning, is add an extra bit of color to the sky. Fun little bit of pizazz.

Bender has 3 tails…

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It was fun to process these images with a method I use for my hobby photography. Might have to play with it a bit more and see about manipulating an HDR from a single image to avoid the ghosting or try a composite of sorts, but it will not be something I offer to clients.

Next up visit Pet Love Photography, serving Greater Cincinnati and the San Francisco Bay Area to see how she captured and processed her HDR images!

 

The theme for this week’s challenge was high key. High key photography uses unnaturally bright lighting to blow out most or all harsh shadows in an image. High key methods were originally developed as a solution to screens that couldn’t properly display high contrast ratios, but has developed into more of a stylistic choice.

The easiest way to achieve a high key look is by utilizing a white backdrop of sorts. And low and behold, it snowed in Minnesota! Perfect! The nifty fifty (50mm f1.8) was the pick for lens as I wanted to overexpose the image to limit the amount of mid and dark shadows. Worked like a charm. Actually a little too well at first as the morning was very bright and the snow was very bright and f1.8 is very bright. Dropped my ISO to 250 and tamed the light just enough. Processed the images as black & whites in Lightroom and adjusted out the shadows on the ground.

Bender was the first subject. He’s interesting as high key because his white parts blend in with the background. His shape is implied at times.

 

 

Axle is always up for a jaunt in the snow, though he’s been a pouty-puss in front of the camera. Same settings as Bender, though since Axle is blackish the look is completely different.

Both of the images below could be considered high key, though the one on the right is more of a “true” high key. Same image, only difference is the shadow is adjusted out on the left image.

Next visit Linda of DogShotz Photography serving Indianapolis IN to see how she captured high key images!

 

This week’s theme was patterns. Bender wasn’t interested in being my subject, so Axle was nominated.

He was eager to go on a walk, though he acts like it is very stressful to sit and stay while I point my camera in his direction (it’s like a kid who doesn’t like to have their picture taken any more), though we did find some lovely patterns around town. Guess I’ll just have to work with the full body profile pose he likes to do as of late haha!

Next up visit Jessica Wasik with Bark & Gold Photography, celebrating the joy and love between Pittsburgh pets and their people.