puppers

=My Three Puppers, by Lisa Wynn= I decided to try to photograph my three dogs: Josie (an 8 year old white husky shepherd mix who thinks she's a puppy in both age and size); Baxter (a shih tzu badly in need of a haircut--he's about 9 or 10 years old); and Manny (a lively welsh corgi/pekingese mix--aka a corginese--he's about a year and a half old).



The Camera
Shortly after it was introduced in August of 2004, I purchased the 5.0 megapixel (MP) [|Canon PowerShot A95]. Its predecessor, the [|Canon PowerShot A80] had gotten great reviews, the PowerShot A-series, in general, [|"offers outstanding value for money...It combines simple operation and affordable pricing with high level performance and image quality – even sharing some of the same features as the PowerShot Pro1, making it a remarkable camera,"][|(as quoted from Mogens Jensen, Head of Canon Consumer Imaging Europe.)]

The 1.8-inch LCD screen (118,000 pixels) flips out (to protect it) and twists (so you can use the LCD to shoot over people's head or on the floor).

The four possible [|image sizes] include:


 * 2,592 x 1944 MP
 * 2,048 x 1536 MP
 * 1,600 x 1,200 MP
 * 640 x 480 MP

For this project, I used the 1,600 x 1,200 MP. The A95 has 3x Optical/4.1x Digital Zoom with a combined zooming range of 12x.

The Software
To resize my photos to fit within the required 200-400 pixels height/width and 72dpi, I used [|Paint.NET] (version 3.08), a free photo-editing program. I've been using this program for about a year now for simple edits, but it has a lot of potential for more extensive editing.

According to the [|BetaNews FileForum], Paint.NET (pronounced Paint Dot Net) "started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing."

Challenges

 * The biggest challenge, of course, is the fact that dogs and animals in general are not very cooperative when it comes to posing or staying still for the camera.
 * Taking photos inside of the house is a challenge since the lighting conditions at my house are pretty low.
 * My dogs have long bodies, so horizontal formatting will mainly be used.
 * Using the zoom lens is tricky without a tripod! I need to get mine back from my father-in-law.

The Photographs
Here (//**to the right**//) Josie is captured outside enjoying the sunshine. I took this photo from a very low angle/child's view. I did not use the flash on any of the photographs taken outside. For a sense of place, I chose a horizontal format and lots of foliage.

The photo of Josie (//**above**//) was taken by me getting down on the floor on my belly and zooming in a bit. (I guess you could call this extreme low angle an "ant's view). I chose a vertical format in order to achieve interesting space around the subject (aka [|negative space].) By using the [|"rule of thirds"], Josie's eyes are the focal point and are in approximately the bottom right quadrant (**//see the diagram below//**.) I tried my best to keep the camera still. I did use a flash since the lighting was poor. Besides resizing the photo, I haven't edited it yet, although I should at least fix the red eye.

//**The idea behind the use of the rule of thirds is that by simply centering the subject matter of the photograph, you lose tension, energy and interest that could be achieved by aligning the photo with the intersecting points.**//

In the two photos of Manny (**//to the left and to the right//**), I was mainly experimenting with angles and lighting. The back-light is quite strong, and creates a glowing effect, especially in the photo to the //**right**//. For the photo on the //**left,**// sat on the floor and took it pretty much straight on. For the one on the //**right**//, I got down on the floor and shot upwards, tilting the camera at an angle. Neither photo is that spectacular, but still they provide examples of contrasting methods for photographing basically the same scene/subject matter.

This photo of Manny(//**to the left**//) was another experiment with a strong light source--this time the sun. While I had taken another photo that was zoomed in, I think this one works better since it gives a sense of place/a window sill. You can see his silly little tongue poking out of his mouth through the curtain. His face, though quite masked, is located in the upper left-hand quadrant when applying the rule of thirds.



These 2 photos of Manny and Baxter (**//above and below//**) were shot at about the height of a small child, pretty much straight on. The negative space in the photo //**above**// is more interesting, and each dog is placed in a quadrant (using the rule of thirds). The photo //**below**// is, compositionally, pretty static, but I like how Manny seems to be singing and Baxter is thinking, "What is he making all that noise about?!" I had to zoom in to get these photos because Manny and Baxter kept running away when I got close to them, so they are somewhat fuzzy, especially the one //**below**//.



This last photo (**to the left**) was taken from an adult's point of view, looking down at Manny. The dark shadows contrast with the bright sunlight. Since I did not zoom in, and because I kept the camera very still, and for the most part, it is in good focus.