This week we had the opportunity to photograph a father/son combination for our magazine. Fortunately, the son happens to be our very own Sundance so it was fun to compare the two.

Dad is Ch Ivoss Touch The Sun (Sonny) who finished up 2007 ranked #6 in both Breed and All Breed Standings. He will be campaigned heavily in 2008 and will grace the cover of our publication, The Rottweiler Magazine, for the February issue. Sonny is not quite 3 years old.

Sundance, his son out of our Cassidy, will not be a year old until next week. He is currently 120 lbs and 26 1/2 inches tall -- just like his dad. Here is a combo image of the two of them. Dad is on the left; son is on the right. Photos are pretty much unretouched at this point.



We also tried to get some shots with Sundance wearing his Santa hat. Here's a shot of the dressing effort .



Needless to say, there will be no Santa hat shot of Sundance for this Xmas. Here's a shot with his auntie RoseAnn just to give you an idea of his size -- and sweetness.



As you can see, all these shots were taken in our newly revamped studio with a green chromakey background which we intend to drop out and add something really nice. I'll share once all the computer work is done.

Jim

Hey Jim,

Glad to see that you got the chromakey background. I am very excited about seeing the results!

James

James,
we're test-driving both Digital Anarchy's Primatte and Vertus' Fluid Mask software. Frankly, at the moment they don't do a much better job of masking than PhotoShop alone but for folks who aren't used to cutting out objects in PhotoShop, I guess they would speed up the process.

As I said, we'll try all three approaches and I'll share the results. As for the background, having a solid color does make it easier to remove in PhotoShop just using selective color. So, that's an advantage to having it even if the software doesn't do its job.

More later,

Jim

Jim,
Oh I just love them! Those big ol Love bugs! VERY handsome.
As for the santa hats...well...they seem to have that same affect on all dogs!
Curious about the chromakey adventures...or Adventures in Chromakey...could be fun!

gorgeous dogs!! love the santa hat shot...you can see the goofyness of the breed!

i'm interested to see the results you get with the backgrounds also. can i ask how you set up your lights for your portraits & what kind you use?

thanks,
liz

Liz,
I have Alien Bees 400s, 2 of them, and I set them up approximately 45 degrees off of the center line. I bounce them off of 36-inch silver umbrellas and trigger them with a Morris wireless transmitter and 2 receivers. That gives me a working setup of F8 at 1/200 on the 30D at ISO 160.

I use the same setup for Group shots at All Breed Shows and for all the shots at Specialties. Being able to control the light and having a constant, predictable light source means my post-processing is always identical in terms of brightness, contrast and sharpening. That is a big time-saver when you're editing over 1500 images from a weekend shoot.

The nice thing about the studio setup is that I can dial down either of the two Bees to create a primary light source and a secondary fill source. Sometimes you want to create some shadow detail especially with people portraits and faces.

I've had the Bees for over 5 years and have never had to replace anything but the modeling light. They are light, very durable, inexpensive and totally reliable. I highly recommend them.

As for the chromakey, Linda (my wife) has a Clio in video production from her days in the TV studio so we've been doing it on the video side for a long time. Applying it to the digital still side should be fairly easy provided that the software does the job it's supposed to do especially with edge blending and virtual lighting sources (to match the new background). Whether or not it does, we'll find out over the next week or so.

Reports to come,

Jim

We needed to work on the Sonny portraits to get out an ad for Dog News for tomorrow. So, Linda tried both the new pieces of software and CS3 and the end result was the CS3 version. According to Linda, you just drop the background out by using the "select color" menu and it creates a clean edge with plenty of detail. Here's the ad:



We'll do a little more experimenting with the other masking tools but if it works fine in PhotoShop then we'll continue to use it. Having the solid background color makes selection very simple. Once selected, it's easy to drop it out and make the background transparent.

Jim

that chroma looks like it worked great!

Tony,
for advertising, we do a lot of cutting out of dogs and it really should help in that area. Plus, it gives me the option of using digital backdrops or shooting any other backdrop and having it on file while only shooting the dogs on the green background.

As for location shooting, I'm still not sold. Half of that gig is the impression created by having a full setup with backdrop and props. I have two small Specialties this week and maybe I'll bring the chroma background. We'll see. More later.

Jim