I did a fund raiser shoot for a Cairn Terrier rescue at a field trial event yesterday.

This was from a session late in the day, and is one of my favorites from the event.

Hey Jim,

Nice work. I am not one who usually like plaid, but it really does work here.

James

Thanks James. The owners (and the ones who booked me for the event) wanted to use the kilt as a prop. They also had a broadsword and a few other things.

I was just about to comment that I could see a buckle and was going to ask if this was a kilt.... Looks good. Too bad you couldn't have added a set of bagpipes leaning in the back! The only thing I would suggest is maybe a bit of fill on the right side (even a reflector)and move him a bit further from the background to blur it a bit. The shot is nice though.

Hi Bob & thanks. Do you mean dog's right or camera right? The main light was to camera right with plus an on camera SB800 bounced from the wall on camera left.

Bagpipes would have been great!

I definitely need a longer backdrop to get the subject further away. I will be spending too much time cleaning up wrinkles in the background on this batch, although as the day went on the wrinkles went away from the weight of the muslin hanging.

Sorry, camera right or the pups left. Maybe the light was up high? The catchlights and resulting shadow looked like the main light was camera left.

One thing you could try is creating a duplicate layer, add some gaussian blur to soften the background, create a mask and paint him back in. May take a few mins but might look more natural than cloning out wrinkles. Best bet is absolutely longer backdrops... :-)

It was up pretty far and we were on the floor. It was also an always on daylight-balanced florescent, so the flash may have over powered it a little.

Now that I think more about it, I think seamless or canvass might have been a better option in this location. The room I was allowed to use was about 10x10 with some floor space taken up by cabinets. A bit cramped

On the print version I've done a bit of blur, a bit of healing brush and some patching on the background. I've found that the spot healing brush does pretty well most of the time and is really quick on creases and such. It looks really bad when it doesn't work, but then I just switch methods.

I like the concept of matching the breed of dog to the props, Scottish Terrier with a Scottish Kilt