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Jason spent the 00s living abroad in Asia. He returned to the Tampa Bay area in 2009 and began Jason Collin Photography. When not behind his camera, Jason is an avid movie watcher and enjoys being outdoors with his adopted puppy, Kiki. Jason is left-handed & a night owl. FULL BIO
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Tuesday, July 10, 2012 at 3:36PM Jason Collin 
Terry holding his dogs Lucy & Sadie with my dog Kiki frame left - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/8 ISO 200 1/250th Strobist: SB-800 in brolly to frame left & SB-600 on a chair to frame rightOn a recent visit to eldest friend Terry's house I brought with me a good bit of my strobist portrait gear planning to make some images of us with our dogs. This involved not only getting the lighting and logistics correct for shooting in his living room, but also giving Terry some quick tips for how to shoot using my Nikon D300. Once I got the above image of him with my dog Kiki and two of his three dogs, we switched players and I began coaching Terry how to first focus on my eyes and then recompose all while holding down the shutter halfway and shooting from a position lower than my eye level. He learned fast, which should not be surprising as he was the valedictorian of our high school class after all!
Yours truly with Kiki & her best friend Sadie - Terry pushed the shutter on this one - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/8 ISO 200 1/250th Strobist: SB-800 in brolly to frame left & SB-600 on floor to frame rightHere is the image Terry and I created together. This is all without mentioning the random element of the dogs and their movements, who were actually rather stoic for them. Once Sadie laid down I got Kiki to come in behind her and I just rested on both of them, Terry was in position, and boom, we got the above shot.
Lucy kissing Kiki - background added digitally - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 800 1/60th SB-800 hotshoe mountedLucy was hanging off the sofa with peoples' legs in the background for the above shot, but I liked the kiss Lucy was giving Kiki so I took both dogs out of that busy background and then using Photoshop painted in a color sampled from Lucy's own hair color with a slight gradient added as the final touch to the digital background.
All these shots were done in just a few moments of time, just a fraction of the time we were there, but now thanks to a little photography know-how we will always have these memories of our dogs together.
Reader Comments (2)
Very nice shots Jason! What did you use for the black background? Was that your own studio backdrop?
Thanks Henry...the black background was created by using a fast shutter speed (1/250th of a second) and controlling the light to mostly fall on the subject. There was a little spill light on objects in the living room background that I just did a little selective exposure adjustment on to make them completely black. So no big studio needed necessarily to create a studio-like black background right in your own living room!
I always forget to take a wide shot of the lighting setup I use. I am sure I will be doing this kind of shot again soon and will get a sample shot to show the setup.