Dogs Only!

Hey everyone,

So as the title suggests, the point of this photo challenge was to only shoot dogs. The photos posted here have not been edited. Here’s a quick summary of the day:

Summary: 

Location: Washington Square Park, NY, NY, USA, Earth

Conditions: Winter, Midday, Bright but Cloudy (Also “brick” outside)

Good News: We shot photos despite people looking at us funny and it being 22 degrees outside, lighting wasn’t too bad

Problems Faced: Difficulty framing the dogs, exposure was off, photos were grainy

Possible Solutions: Use burst mode, get a better angle of the dogs, use a shutter speed of 1/1000s or more for fast dogs

Best Photo: N/A? I only got off a few half-decent pictures

Worst Photo: By worst, I mean they had unrealized potential

Story and Analysis:

My good friend Alex and I decided that Washington Square Park in Manhattan was a good place to find dogs since it has a decently sized dog park. It was freezing outside (as Alex said, it was “brick”). It was bright but cloudy, and the 11 o’clock sun was slightly off to one side of the sky. One concern was that in winter, everything is very grayed out and dreary, but luckily the lighting wasn’t too bad. The best thing we had going for us was the sheer variety of dogs: poodles, Great Danes, pugs, etc. We took a few pictures from the around the park until we decided to hit the dog park. It looked almost like a lion enclosure, with lightly colored sand/dirt covering the ground. The dogs were playing, fighting, looking for romance (Nope, no pictures of this people. Give the dogs their privacy!). Here are a few shots from the day:

So you may be wondering, “Where are the good pictures?” Well, my friends, I’m sorry to report, but one of our largest obstacles was framing the subjects in this shoot. We are still learning, and besides getting nice pictures, we endeavor to learn through these challenges. I will delve into the analysis a bit later, but first, let’s talk about our methodology. I shot most of the pictures with the lowest ISO possible so that the images would not be grainy. I also set my camera to shutter speed priority, and I did not use manual focus since it would definitely not be responsive enough. Though we didn’t capture anything amazing, here are the best pictures I took.

Best Pics

Now here’s the hard part. Most photographers only show their best pictures, but I don’t think I would do the experience justice if I didn’t comment on what could be improved. Here are some of my worst pictures. (Remember, these are bad because they had potential to be good pictures.)

Worst Pics

Let’s start with the first picture. This could have been a gritty picture of two dogs settling a score. However, since I didn’t frame it correctly, the left dog is cropped out. Also, the shutter speed could have been set higher in order to reduce blur.  As for the second picture, it suffered from poor timing. Now, you can’t be too hard on yourself for missing a good moment, but you should learn to use all of the tools at your disposal. If I had the foresight to use the burst feature, I probably would have shot the catch at a photogenic moment. Instead, the dog looks like a creature from another dimension. Like the first, the third picture suffers from bad framing, as the fence blocks some of the dog from view. This was a very photogenic dog, and it should have been the easiest thing to shoot. Now, the last picture doesn’t seem like much at a glance, but it had potential. If I had framed the shot better and had the right focus, I could have captured the moment the two dogs on the lower right decided to go on an adventure. Now their story will forever go untold…

Well, that’s all folks. In the end, it wasn’t a bad day, and we both obtained valuable experience on how not to suck. The lighting conditions were nice, and though it was disappointing that we didn’t catch any great moments, we had fun laughing at our bad pictures. Next time, we’ll adapt and adjust. Thanks for reading, and please let me know if I could have done something better.

Adios,

-Miles