What a charming little man Hunter is.  With those beautiful big blue eyes, he’ll steal your heart.  And he LOVES his furry best friend, Max.

The bottom image is a design for a canvas gallery wrap – a unique keepsake to have in the family for years to come.

To view more from this portrait session, the following link takes you the Joni Photo Fan Page:  Hunter.

While you are there, please click “like” (thumbs up on the right column) and become a “fan”!  I greatly appreciate your support!

For this home portrait session, I used the big bay windows to provide the back light separating the back of the doggies’ head from the leopard print background.  A speedlight  shooting through an umbrella on a light stand is placed just off to camera right.   Milan get ready for these two adorable hotties!

Spencer is an 8 month old VERY energetic and lively moving target!  My nickname for him during the session was “Spunky!” It should be fairly obvious that this King Charles Spaniel steals the heart of every passerby on his daily walks along the Riverplace  Marina.

Here’s one of my other favorites from Spencer’s portrait session just to show you what a beautiful and handsome little guy he is.

For you techies, here is the set up to create this image:

So here’s my thought process for this image.  I wanted to show the buildings and sky in the background as well as show “me” and the products in the foreground.

I first metered for the light coming from the window in the background of the image so the buildings and sky would not get “blown out” (i.e. overexposed) in the final image.  Unfortunately, my light meter was in the “shop” so I had to use the meter in the camera body (not the best method but will do in a pinch).  Wanting to keep a good depth of field (i.e. a wider range of keeping “things” in focus), I set the aperture to f/8 and adjusted the shutter speed until my meter indicated the correct exposure (i.e. middle of the scale).

If I just stayed at this setting, everything in the foreground (including me) would be dark.  So the next part to consider was how to light the foreground.  A Nikon D200 was set up on the tripod and an SB900 Speedlight was placed on the light stand with a shoot through umbrella.  The set up image doesn’t show that the light and umbrella was actually placed higher just above my head pointing slightly downward.   Having the light set up “off camera”, I avoided glare off the products and placing the light slightly above me created a flattering shadow line (see below my chin).

Ta Da!  Let me know what you think!

You know this picture is going to come out every time Evan brings a “significant other” home to meet the parents.  But how can anyone resist this little cutie on his literally “sheepskin” rug.

Ladya is a Russian beauty and one who knows that she is “all that”.  Our dog Murphy would stare longingly out our front window pining for her whenever she was out in her front yard.  Jessica and Brett brought Ladya back as a puppy when they were in Russia serving for the Peace Corps.  Ladya is very GIRLY – she  prefers the fine warmth and comfort of the indoors and does not like going out in the cold and rain or getting her paws muddy.  She is also quite the conversationalist and will let you know what is on her mind.

For those honing their photography skills (Amy D – talking to you!), this image was taken using Nikon D200 and Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 zoom lens with ISO at 100, f/4.0 at 1/400s.  Shot with ambient light source (sun) off camera right and towards the back of the subject to give rim lighting around top of her ears.  I slightly overexposed because my subject is back lit.

My favorites from portrait sessions tend to gravitate towards these “fly on the wall” snippets where the subjects may be doing something considered “ordinary” to them but are intriguing to me.  Looking at this from a “future” perspective, these types of images are a time capsule of sorts.  Most likely the technology will be radically different in the future – think of us playing with ping pong on Atari.

Keris arrived in September and we scheduled her portrait shoot in November.  Katie should be an interior designer for as you see below, Keris’s room is beautifully decorated in pinks, spring greens, beiges and white.  Katie wanted a framed keepsake, something that Keris would always have, to hang above the changing table.  I suggested this collage of Keris surrounded by a clean simple white frame with lines to match the chest of drawers, which would always remain in Keris’s room beyond her diaper changing days!