Better Late than Never?

Dog Blog Post #328: (Backlogged from last night, as Blogger was down, this is actually nearly 24 hours old... not that anybody probably cares!)

Tonight was dog class, and I think Henry did very well. His stay has much improved, and I can now walk all the way around him from at 6-8 feet away. He'll also stay if I walk a good 15-20', although he will occasionally move if I have my back to him, or is positioned to have his back toward me.

At the end of class, I handed the leash to another owner's daughter (Jr. High age?) while I put out chairs away. While Henry kept an eye on me the whole time, he waited with the girl, didn't fuss, and clearly enjoyed her fussing over him (especially once I returned!)

He's such a momma's boy, so I was both pleased and a bit surprised.

On to the Daily Shoot assignment:

Make a photograph dominated by the color red today.

Hmmm... red toys, red jackets, red robes, red sculptures - I considered them all - but came back to the red cookie jar as my best bet for the day. My time was short today, and having just a few minutes, I was stuck just putting the jar on the kitchen table, calling a random dog over (Mr. Greedy McHenry hogged the limelight, of course) and snapped of a dozen shots of both the bone on top the lid, and the red band across the top of the jar itself. I chose the one up top, as I liked the charm and the lighting was a bit better. Here's the other one...

(Note to self, look up how to set the lighting to "incandescent")

Speaking of lighting, I got another brief opportunity to retry the Pelargoniums from yesterday. You may recall that they came out overexposed. Not to repeat that effort, I took a moment to look up Exposure Compensation, and I'm proud to report I did not overexpose them today!

Nope, I underexposed them, pretty much ruining every shot (and I shot a lot!)

I did manage to get the lavender to come out reasonably right on the very last host. This is not the same plant as yesterday, which had nice even front (key) lighting, but rather a backlit sprig, similar to the Pelargoniums.

This is an earlier, overexposed example (I believe it's called "blown highlights") but I liked the background...

A step at a time, a step a time.

(Yes, I realize this is supposed to be a dog blog, but the plants are much more patient with my camera fiddlings, and so are standing in for my four-legged models until I get the basics sorted out. Just try to pretend they are covered in fur, and picture them dancing about in the wind, testing Baby's ability to keep focus, despite my entreating them to stay!)

Editor's Note: I had a question from Amber-Mae about how to get blurry backgrounds. It actually pretty much falls out as an artifact of zooming in close with the right sort of background (something about focal-lengths and apertures.) If you want the technical description, you can read about it in Wikipedia under Bokeh, if you want a more readable version, I rather liked Ken Rockwell's.

I don't think you need anything too fancy to get it. Here's an example from a while back using the point-n-shoot:

Not bad, but I get more "glitter" from Baby off the backlit flowering plum...

I believe lens designers strive for and photographers value good Bokeh. At least they seem to discuss it at length when given the chance!