Try saying that five times fast.

I hope everyone had a wonderful, productive holiday season. I decided to unwind a bit on Christmas day by making a few portraits of my sister's pit bull, Princess. She's an exceptional model and really hammed it up in front of the camera.

As always, I appreciate constructive thoughts on lighting, b+w conversion, etc.

I have always found pits to be one of the easiest breeds to photograph. They are very calm and willing.

Very pretty dog. Sweet pose, watch your highlights, they are pulling my eye to them

Hi Kelly,

Great pose - and very nice portrait. It feels vert natural and comfortable. I do agree with Julie though about the highlights. LOL, I also agree with the comments about Pits in general. They are generally great dogs - and the few portraits I have done of them have generally been very smooth.

James

Kelly,
I, too, love Pits and have always had good luck with them both personally and photographically. This is a very nice portrait but as Julie has pointed out, the highlights are a bit hot. Nevertheless, I like the mood and, especially, her eyes.

Jim

Your image of your sisters dog is just lovely and she indeed is living up to the name Princess. The unusual position with the one leg overhanging the edge adds great interest to the shot. I also like your BW version.
I have to agree with all that has been said about this breed. I also like your site.
Happy New Year.

Thank you all for the helpful and encouraging comments. Princess is a really wonderful dog. My sister's husband found her in the middle of the highway almost 7 years ago, pregnant and quite malnourished. She had a litter of healthy pups, two of which still live with my sister's family. They adore my sister's two young boys and are definitely entertaining.

I've told this to many people who balk at the bully breeds - I groomed dogs for several years. It was the little white fluffy dogs who were more likely to have an attitude problem.

Anyway, I tweaked the image a bit. I brought down the highlights and added a little punch to the midtones. I definitely like this version better. It proved to be a good exercise for me because I am usually afraid of an image appearing flat. I didn't want to bring the highlights down, fearing that the image would lose it's pop.



~Kelly

Beautiful dog and great photo. That is really nice B/W conversion. Did you do any special treatments?
Diana

Thank you Diana. I processed the image in Lightroom and used the LR version of Silver Efex Pro. I'm a big fan of duo toned images so this has warm shadows with neutral highlights. I also did some dodging and burning here and there in Photoshop.

This is a great portrait, I love how comfortable and relaxed she is, really natural. Beautiful dog.