The Million Mutt March & Woofstock was held this weekend in Dallas. It is held to help raise awareness about rescue and the like. I went out today to visit with my favorite rescue group, Weim Rescue of North Texas, and ended up photographing lots of dogs! Below is a sample.

Fun name and great cause. Lovely images too! Thanks for sharing.

nice compositions, nice images, too much photoshop. . . that said, the last two images are very nice, even with the post processing. . . well done. . .

What part of the post processing is too much?

very nice pictures! I don't think the post processing is too much, I'll be interested to read why Tony thinks it is.

too much "soft-focus," the "wedding" look for dogs is not my taste. In every photograph, there is a single plane of focus that is consistent across the the image - (photos are two dimensional). With these images i notice that while the subject is sharp, you likely, and unintentionally I'm sure, removed the plane of focus which catches my eye and makes me feel the images are over processed.

In addition the lack of contrast (because of the post processing) makes the shots look like you were shooting into the light or in other words the sun spilled into the lens, and not fancy photoshop work. Shallow depth of field and image isolation are important but not at the expense of contrast, focus plane and "pop." Another reason i think lens babies are a gimic. . . (i know you did not use one on these shots, i'm only giving you a reference).

The weimaraner shots look almost like you over did the "lighten shadows" which makes the images appear that there is a lack of contrast in the dog eyes, and a lack of contrast between the subject's coat and the background - again it's to "dreamy" for my taste.

The last two images are, in my, view better.

On the bright side, photography is art and you get to do whatever you want and assuming you have clients, whatever they pay you to do!

At the end of the day, you have everything you need to make a great image (in my view) in fact, even better, the images, with less PP, would, in my book, be more eye appealing and natural. The portrait look is okay for some dogs and for some shots, but the use of actions and programs and PS in some cases needs to be toned down.

I use a lot of interesting PP so i'm not saying it's not a good tool, i'm telling you what I see in your images.

Tony Bynum

Forgive my ignorance, but I dont understand half of what you just explained, so I dont know how I could have done it.

I'll tell you what I did though:

- adjusted exposure in LR
- spot adjusted exposure to the dogs face and chest (where a reflector may have added more light had I used one)
- added saturation
- cloned/healed a ROYAL BLUE leash that was in each photo in LR, then finalized in CS3
- added a gaussian blur layer to an already blurred background just to smooth out the areas where the leash was removed

And thats about it. I dont even think I touched the contrast button at all, and none of this was done with actions except for the last step. I have something called 'beauty blur' that addes the gaussian blur, and then I painted out the dog in the mask layer. So there really isn't any soft focus on the dog at all, its all on the background.

I dont think I was shooting directly into the sun as we were under the shade for all of these. The original shots of the yorkie are nice, but shade spots hide the face more than I wanted so I spot adjusted those too.

Thanks for taking the time to explain yourself though. I am totally self taught, what LITTLE I know, so I appreciate the learning aspect of your post.

Chris, your post processing is about exactly what i saw in your images, in other words you did exactly what i though and explained, and thus the reason for my comments.

I'm only one person, i have my likes and disslikes just like everyone else. I think you over did the portrait look - it's obvious and to me it just needs toned down a bit thats all. Some like it some dont. I think you have some great images that could be better that's the point of my comments.

as for contrast, it's obvious you did not touch it, but if anything you should have. that's the point. In my view, you over processed and in some cases missed the critical aspect of what maybe you should have processed - the contrast in the dog.

Every image has a plane of focus. when you blur every thing but the subject, you remove the plane of focus especially if there's back ground and the subject is standing on the ground or among items like grass that should be in focus. like I said, blurring is okay for some things but you have to be careful about removing elements in the image that our brains expect to see. So much of photography is psychological and happens in the brain that when we see something that's not right we notice it, even if we cant explain it.

in any event, keep at it. It's all a learning process, sharing is party of learning for each of us.

Thanks for sharing and keep bringing your images to the table.

Tony