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Sammy's latest portrait



If you take your dog to the park, bring your camera. Never miss a chance to practice shooting! 




The above was taken with my Nikon D5100 and the ultra-sharp Nikon 35mm 1.8 lens. I used a shallow aperture (f/2.2) to help blur the background (called bokeh). I could have blurred it more if I had gotten closer to Sammy but I didn't want a closeup and I really wanted both trees in the background. 

I spent a little more time than usual on the processing. The photo was shot in RAW and initially processed in Lightroom 4 where I added some vignetting. I then used some of the NIK software tools to help blur the background more -- Viveza to add a little more blur to the background and Dfine to clean up some noise. 

The result: a professional looking photo from a consumer-oriented DSLR and lens. 

One tip: be careful using shallow apertures when photographing dogs with long-ish snouts. If you focus on their nose, for example, the eyes may be out of focus and vice versa. It's better to stop down a bit and focus on the eyes

Please feel free to check out my SmugMug site for all my work. For prints and licensing info on any of the above photos, please hit the "see larger" link and then go to "buy." 

--S.H. 

All photos above are ©Steve Hymon and may not be used elsewhere without my advanced written permission. All rights reserved.