I just did a second shoot with a friends daughter and her Papillon. She won Best Jr Handler of the Year (Toy Group) so they want to use these pictures for advertising. It's the second time I made the poor kid dress up and bathe the dog, and they turned out really dark! I set them up in the shade since it was a sunny day thinking that was best. I had her mother holding a reflector in the sun to shine on them. I was shooting f/2.8, ISO 400, the histogram showed it was a little on the dark side but it didn't look too bad and of course on the LCD they all looked great. I did try using the 580EX flash a couple times but the images looked way too washed out.

A few of them are probably savable with some post processing but most would be too grainy. I know it could be done a lot better.

Any suggestions on what I did wrong and what I can do to get more professional quality shots? Thanks!!