You Are Going to Mail Me WHERE?

Lovable Laurel

Laurel is one of the sweetest cats I have ever photographed at a shelter.  She was so calm and content to stay in her cat condo, yet enjoyed being petted and playing with the feather toy too. Her round face and yellow eyes are adorable and I love those little black ear tips!  She is available for adoption at Friendswood Animal Control 281-996-3391

 

Ready for Liftoff

Those ears!  

Sweet Ramona is still a puppy so maybe she will grown into them...if not she can always play the canine version of Sally Field's character in The Flying Nun.

Ramona is available for adoption at Friendswood Animal Control 281-996-3391.

Portraits

During my recent Basenji session, I also photographed each dog individually for head/shoulder portraits.  I shot them against a white background and added the pattern later in Photoshop.  These were made into Photographic Gallery Wraps like the couch composite and are all hanging in a wall grouping.

Jorji

Tippy

 

Sasha

Another Composite

Again, Photoshop allowed me to create a composite from three separate images of these Basenjis on their couch.  And again, I learned some things that I need to think about the next time I shoot something similar --- first of all, don't have the dog with the darkest fur the farthest from the main light source!  Second, shoot from the same position for the most accurate result --- I moved directly across from each section of the couch for each dog and that made each image have a slightly different angle...not horrible but it would have been better to stay in the middle and shoot left, center and right from that position.  Third, bring a lint roller --- I spent a lot of time in post processing cloning away dog hair.  Neither of the composites I did for this family were planned before the photo session, they were the result of not being able to get all the dogs together in the same shot.

The end product of this image was a 14 x 42 inch canvas gallery wrap (that is why the composite above has the colored frame, it was wrapped back around the sides) and it turned out great:

 I do think the canvas would look even better larger.  It will hang with several other canvas portraits of the individual dogs and other items in a collection on the wall.

Stella and Stetson Are Movie Stars

Stella

Stetson

These two dogs were found running down a street near the now-completed Friendswood Animal Control facility back in November 2011.  They may be brother and sister, and they are both striking looking dogs and very well behaved and friendly.  They know some commands, Stetson is neutered, they have managed to stay sweet after many weeks in a kennel.  Two months have gone by and no one has been interested in adopting them.  We have all been very worried about their chances of ever finding homes. 

But things are looking up ----  our shelter manager Lisa Bragg is married to Tom who is an Air Force pilot and also owns his own small plane which he uses as part of Pilots N Paws rescue to relay animals who need to get from a shelter to either a rescue or an adopter in another part of the US.  Tom answered a Facebook request for Subaru owners who were also involved in Pilots N Paws and he and Lisa were chosen to be in a Subaru commercial!  It was filmed last week in Friendswood and in Galveston with a complete New York production team (makeup artists, wardrobe people, director, grips, camera men, USA network executive, catering, an RV, the whole she-bang), and Stella and Stetson were the dogs who played the part of being rescued.  The commercial will air during the Westminster Dog Show in Feb on the USA network.  The dogs were filmed at the new facility one day, and then another day for 12 hours in Galveston and it will be very interesting to see how much air time they actually end up with.  The exposure on Facebook has brought more attention to them and now there are some potential families interested.  The dogs may not stay together, and the families still have to pass home visits and background checks, but it looks like Stella and Stetson have a good chance at last of having real homes.  I love happy endings!

Thank You Photoshop

Of course the photographer just about always prefers to "get it right in the camera", but when you are trying to shoot 3 untrained canines, I am so glad there is the option of compositing them.  This is one image where I shot each dog separately on the window sill, pretty much in the spot they are in the final image, and combined them in Photoshop.  I learned a lot with this shoot back on the fall...and only hope I will remember when/if I attempt something similar again.

 

 I used one of my Alien Bee 800 lights with the octabox. The light reflected in the window but we moved it as far left as we could to get the reflection out of the frame.