I reworked this from a shot I took at our Royal Melb Show last year

Your shot is stunning. I love black on black and you captured the real beauty of this dog. I wish I could see a slight kicker light that would outline the dog only a little, especially around the muzzle.

Nate, Great again!! I agree with PeggySue, but looking at her eyes tells me you had no lights on the shot anyway:) What an awesome dog and beautiful shot.

Beautiful shot. I love the black background. Did you do this with a flash(overpowering the natural light) or an acutual backdrop?

However it was done, it would look great framed well and hung on the wall

I like the idea, it's a nice image, and I like the color.

I'm going to be hyper critical here. I think the fact that the dogs mouth, nose and neck get lost in the background is unfortunate. Especially the back of the neck. I would try to put that back or make it more apparent. As it is, there is too little natural transition from the head to the collar, except for the light sheen off the black fur, and to me that's not the place I want to see a dogs head connecting to his body.

I really like the idea, and I think it's doable. If you’re going to leave this shot as it is, I'd say you should crop it. I find that I'm loosing the feeling because, while the color is good, the composition is not balanced. To me it's acting like it's going to fall over, one way or the other.

I'd try a couple different crops of the same image and see if you can’t eliminate some of the black space, or at leaset get the balance back into the shot.

Nice capture, nice exposure.

Ahhh I remember the "original" Dobe having a green/grass background. So I can probably guess burning/dodging/sharpening/contrast/saturation (or some of) has been involved in this version.

I feel this works better than the 'original' in this case (I dont always like seeing images blackened) and the only thing I personally would change is showing a bit more lip under the nose. Its funny how the black against black works here. Nice. Strangely I dont think I have ever photographed a Dobe.

And Nat if you werent after critiques (you didnt say that you were) please ignore my post! ;-)

Oh CC is always good

FS - I wonder if your monitor is darker than mine? I am finding that some people think my images are a tad darker than I see them, yet when I get them printed, it comes out looking like my monitor (yet I presume their monitor is ALSO calibrated?!). In this case, the neck is quite clear and doesn't blend in for me. The nose does, but that is inevitable I'm afraid because it had a slightly grass tinge on it.

Chezzy - Yep that is the one, good memory! Background was burnt out. I also much prefer this to the original, and I loved the dog so I thought it was worth playing with. As I said above though, the lip had too much green from the grass on it somehow, so it was either burn that little bit out or not.

Everyone else - yep this is no backdrop or studio shot, it was a candid taken on a show day

Nat

the more I look at it the more i think it's cropped right. i use the eye one by macbeth.

If you look just behind the ear i dont see any body/neck/head. anyhow, it's a very nice shot! I'd be very proud of it if it were mine!