This week’s #PetPhotographyChallenge is a technical one known as “bokeh”. I was already familiar with the concept from a past challenge I had joined. Bokeh is the quality of out of focus or blurred parts of a photograph, and the resulting points of light. A shallow depth of field is needed to achieve this effect, with some sort of lights in the background.
I wanted to try something different with the snow and the sunlight on it, but neither the weather nor my camera wanted to cooperate with that. In fact, my Nikon D5500 and I had a lot of disagreements during this photo shoot! I’m trying to learn more about all of it’s functions, but I have a long way to go. In addition, it’s not easy to juggle camera, with the settings you want, and a ball to get the dogs’ attention, and then your flash goes off, which you did not want it to…..I was more frustrated than anything when I was done with this one! There is now a piece of tape over my flash, so it cannot pop up whenever it feels like it (normally I hold it down with one finger…but I did not have enough hands in this case). 🙂
I did end up with two or three photos to choose from, and I ultimately chose this one. It is not perfect to my eye, but I thought it had the best bokeh. I’ll share the other photos I liked at another time.
Do you find photography frustrating at times?
The photo came out great.
That’s lovely bokeh!
I definitely find photography frustrating at times… but then it’s magical when it all works out like in your photo!
Thank you! The joys of digital photography are just being able to snap and snap away, without worrying too much about the missteps that can just be deleted. Even if it’s just that one photo that came out as you wanted (with me it’s often only ONE – LOL)!
Bokeh is one of my favorite camera tricks. Yours looks awesome. ♥
That came out great.
Wow! That’s a terrific photo.
Love the background! <3
Yours came out fabulous!!!
WOW! That photo is amazing!
I LOVE this photo of Luke! You did a great job, despite the frustrations! Getting fair – never mind good or above average – indoor photos of Ducky is nearly impossible. I play with the phone’s photo software A LOT to make decent photos out of crummy ones! ????
Indoors can be so much more frustrating. But with these I actually started outdoors, but wasn’t having luck there! Actually, this photo is a combination. We’re indoors, but the door was open to the outside.
Software is great and can be a lifesaver (and don’t tell that this photo is ….slightly…..edited. 🙂
“Pawsome” job! Bokeh is one photography facet I’m not good at all but your post inspires me to practice at it more to improve. Well done.
Thank you! It’s not as easy as I thought it was going to be! I definitely need more practice too (and need to learn more about my camera as well).
That came out really nice! I can imagine how much effort went into getting this shot.
Thank you! We won’t discuss how much cursing went into it (at the camera, not the dogs, they were perfect) – LOL.
The only problem we have at times is that I dark. When mom takes my picture I am a black blob BOL
Edward (& Lily)
Trust me, we’ve had plenty of black blob photos ourselves! 🙂
I think you did great. that’s a very nice photo. And yes, photography, especially involving dogs, can be frustrating. You should have a setting in the menu to turn your flash off. Although, if you shoot in full auto mode, I don’t think you can do that.
Thank you! You are right. I can shut my flash off, but not if I’m using full auto mode or one of the “scene” settings. I tried, in this case, to do some manual stuff, but I just couldn’t get it right!
This turned out beautifully! It was definitely worth the frustration! I know how that goes, though. Barley is so patient and almost always willing to look at the camera without any prompting, so it’s usually just fun to take pictures with her. But Rye is impossible! I’ll get something cute set up and she’ll sit and wait the whole time I set up (even though she’s allowed to go play while I do that) and then as soon as I am ready to take a picture, she has ants in her pants and can’t stay to save her life! The frustration is something I’m really struggling to work on because I know it’s not good for our training, but it is not easy!
Cricket is exactly like Rye. She’s so fidgety! We’re lucky we have more cooperative dogs, in Barley and Luke, to keep us somewhat sane! 🙂
Your photo looks great! Ours is really bad this week, but with the broken ankle all our ideas kind of flew out the window and we just weren’t able to get a good one. Once can’t be perfect every week.
Thank you! Yes, sometimes we have to let go of that desire for perfection (though I think your photos were great!). I kept trying more in this case, but eventually I just had to give in to being too tired to do any more!
Nice job with this challenge, it is a beautiful photo.