Last week we drove out to see our friends Tim & Julia for tea and cakes. While there I took the opportunity to photograph dog portraits of their two: Star is a pedigree Staffie, while Riley is part Staffie, part something else… Both are charming and well-behaved (better than some of the human subjects I’ve had to photograph) and went along with my demands in good spirit. As it was quite late in the day the light was beginning to fade, so I pushed the ISO to 1250 to get a workable aperture for these close-up shots. I wanted limited depth of field to isolate their faces and as time went on I found that my working aperture crept down to f/2.8 (for the shot of Star on her own). Riley has a lovely light brown coat but I decided that I prefer these shots in Black & White as I found the green grass a little distracting, and the monochrome makes the dogs seem more distinguished.
Nikon D700, 24-70mm lens, Adobe Lightroom 3