Before and After

Dog Blog Post #240: As I found yesterday's assignment so fascinating, and today's was relatively straight forward, I thought I would give a few of yesterday's High Key pictures another go post-processing, based on what I learned laboring to get yesterday's "winning" shot to come out white.

Below is the picture folks seemed to like the best, straight out of the camera...

I bet you didn't believe me when I said it was BLUE!

Here's the same picture, after my "improved" fiddling and a slight crop on the left...

... I really do think that's about as good as I'm going get with the tools and knowledge that I have. (You can click on either to see a slightly larger version.)

Fascinating.

Well, I think it is. I really am having way too much fun with this.

Moving on to today's Daily Shoot assignment:

Happy, sad, frazzled, or joyus? Make an abstract or literal photo that expresses how you feel today.

I only had to think a moment or two about this one. I've been plowing through a stack of Strategic Planning books for work, and so I figured I would take a picture to reflect that.

Back to my favorite(?) window, threw on every light in the room, dragged one of the big floor lamps close to the chosen spot, spread my books (and few extra bits for effect) out on the floor, pulled out the full-sized tripod and shrunk it as low as it would go (18"?), gathered drool rag and treats, then let Zachary in.

He took one look at the mess, plopped right down in front of the book, arched his neck gracefully, and froze. I quickly snapped the shot, although I wasn't quite ready. Alas, the tripod wasn't in the right spot and it came out a bit blurry, but I included the raw picture below to show just how good he's getting at figuring out what I want...

What a good boy!

Let's see - tip of the day? For the shot below, I tucked a treat under the yellow highlighter to get a better arch to his neck. You can just see it, now that you know it's there...

... I did the same thing to get him looking into the roses in the "blue" shot, way up top. Obviously, one must have a pretty good "Leave it!" for that technique to work!

In the end, my favorite (and uploaded) shot was the one below...

I can't believe he actually let me put my glasses on him!