Since I'm fried and procrastinating getting back to work...thought I would post a recent shot from a dog show.

Dee Dee, this is a gorgeous shot! I hope the owners bought a huge print of it. It perfectly sets off the fru fru nature of show poodles

My feeling too Julie: and have a look through Dee Dee's newer website (the one shown in/under the poodle image, - not the art website in the signature). Some magic action there!

Hey Dee Dee,

This is magnificent. Care to talk about the post processing a bit?

James

Thanks Julie, I haven't had time to put all the images up yet so the owner hasn't seen it yet. I did have permission to take the photos at this show to sell but the challenge is going to be contacting all the owners. I decided to only shoot the groups and BIS because I found in the breed rings, it was impossible to get armband shots and to figure out what dog went with what handler. In groups with only one of each breed there is no question and I just went to the superintendants site to get numbers of winners then looked them up in the catalog. I will snail mail the ones I have photos of.

PC really nice of you to say, I am still not sure what I'm doing half the time but getting better with practice. I spent today at a cross country/dressage event and practiced a bunch of things like slowing down shutter speed and panning to get background blur (haven't opened those from the card yet but I strongly suspect they didn't work out LOL...)

Thanks James...believe it or not this is almost right from camera. I was shooting with the 200 1.8 lens (at 1.8) so the really shallow DOF blurred out the gray concrete ground behind the dog, and the blur at the bottom of the image is actually a table I was shooting over the top of. It was green so the only post processing I did on this was to turn the green to the same gray as the background in the upper half of the image. Oh and I also removed the show lead.

Hey Dee Dee,

Very well done then! So there ARE some big advantages of the 200 F1.8. It really gives you some awesome blur and the photo of the poodle is absolutely spectacular.

It is too bad that Canon cancelled this lens. It obviously gives you an advantage for work such as this.

James

I never have heard why they discontinued this lens, they didn't replace it with anything either and a lot of people seem to love it? I really love mine, it does a good job in low light and is super sharp in any light. Heavy though! It's even heavier (by a little) than the 300 2.8.