Thanks for the great input!!! Feel free to be harsh I have very thick skin, I am soaking in all the advice.

Ohhhh nooo Peggy Sue...I got CROTCH SHOTS. LOL! I see that now. I have no clue how to pose people they were basically posing themselves, I will be on crotch watch from now on. THanks for the suggestions on the flooring, I learned that lesson the hard way, that is a great idea I will get a big rug. I am going to be ordering the grooming table Julie suggested too, when I see the photographers at the shows they always have a table and their camera set up at a certain height and they don't have to change anything. My tripod also gave me fits it wouldn't sit straight so I kept tipping it by hand...sigh.

Thanks Bob, I did crop these down a bit sometimes too much I will have to learn how to pose each number of subjects better to fit the different formats. I found I didn't have nearly as much backdrop as I'd like but I think it will help when I get the table as the subjects then cannot be creeping forward and off the floor area I want them to be on.

Thanks so much for all that James. I looked at the lady in the cattle dog shots and she actually looks very golden to me, I don't see any purple? It's so hard with monitors....does anyone else see purples on their monitors? I have not printed any of those out yet (she was excited and wanted one of each, over 20 but when I sent her to the order form that shows the cost I haven't heard back from her yet LOL). I see what you mean about the hand! Thank you those are the kinds of comments I need to hear. That corgi shot was my favorite too, I wasn't too excited about most of the shots myself I like the ones though that aren't the norm. Although, the owners did order several but not that one, maybe the more "artsy" shots aren't a big of sellers at least to the show crowd. The golden pose was totally the girls idea she said she'd been wanting to try that for a long time. I should have used the darker backdrop though the dog got lost.

"Make sure you keep the counter for the natural rotation that folks tend to have (for example, I generally have to rotate everything about 2 degrees when I shoot hand-held)."

I'm not sure what you mean by this one? I'd love to hear though it sounds like a good tip!

Thanks on the Terv, really cute puppy I had to correct in photoshop a lot more than I would have liked. Another thing to fix for the next time around.

Julie I know what you mean I dont' like wrinkles either, but it is so much easier to carry muslin around and I like being able to drape it forward to become the floor under them. I am going to try bringing the dog farther from the backdrop and see if that helps hide the wrinkles. I didn't light the backdrop actually I put a spot light effect on in photoshop. Is that a no no? I wish I could light it like this in real life but I don't think I could...the clients all went nuts over them so far but then this was the first photo shoot like this most of them have had opportunity to do. I wasn't at all happy with the outcome myself, I see so many things I should have done differently but it's all part of the learning process.

Hey Jim! It's great see you here and to get your input. I shot jpeg. I know I should shoot RAW, but as it is it takes me a few days to get through all the shots with jpeg (I work 12 plus hours a day on the computer plus paint at night and walk my dog for an hour so I don't have a lot of extra time). Opening, looking at and processing RAW images takes 3-4 times longer than jpegs, it would take me weeks to get to all of them. I tried some RAW shots and also didn't see the benefit of raw I found the controls in the program it used to be hard to adjust and would always end up loading it into photoshop anyway where I was more comfortable (I know it has to do a better job I just was not able to figure it out). What is ACR? Also all of the images were pretty much the same color balance as shot I was just getting fancy and putting warming filters and spotlights on some in photoshop. I'm very open to suggestions on this though!

I have no helpers so I was doing the baiting unless there was a spouse or friend helping the person posing the dog. I would love to be able to stand away from the camera with some kind of remote thing that would set off the camera and strobes while allowing me to be wherever I want, baiting dogs but I suppose even if they made one, that wouldn't be feasible as how would you focus. I totally agree on the backdrops I am going to get 10 x 20 from now on. I spent waaay too much time in photoshop cloning in backdrops! I skipped some floors as they were more complicated and not worth the time for the price, I will clone them in on ones that sell.

Thanks, yes I see I need to be way more aware of what the people are doing. I just will not be happy taking the usual posed shots of people and their dogs, I really want to do something more artsy (I want to do horses with a backdrop but many problems to work out there). And I don't think show people are going to want artsy. They want more traditional and something that makes their dog look good conformation wise.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to comment and help. As I said I personally was not all that happy with these but I do see what needs to be worked on.

Oh one more question, what aperture do you guys usually shoot at? I was down at 2.8 (I hear a collective groan out there LOL) thinking I wanted the shallow DOF look but I got a lot of faces OOF! Also does anyone know of a good tutorial on the sekonic light meter? I went through the whole manual with it and still have no idea how to use it or how it is supposed to work. It uses too many terms it doesnt' explain and I have no idea what they are talking about. I would love to learn to use it, I took a lot of practice exposure shots of each dog before I could start shooting and even then I overexposed too much.