Lazy Old Coot Loc: Gainesville, Florida

There are twenty-two homes on our street and twenty-five pets so I have been taking quite a few dog or cat pictures lately. I thought this one of my next door neighbor's dog came out quite well. ........ Coot

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Treepusher Loc: Kingston, Massachusetts

Cute pooch and a really nice shot!

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

I get a sense of a playful personality and confident intelligence. Good color for Halloween

As the dog itself is shown in vertical stance, I'd like to see a tiny bit less on each side of the frame and more at the top, a true portrait in portrait orientation, if you will. But the details of the coat are great and the expression sparkles.

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

You found a cute nieghbor to photograph and caught him sharply and at a good angle. Since I rarely shoot portraits, please take my suggestions with a grain of salt, or several: I tend to prefer natural looking backgrounds with enough blur to make them non distracting, or a plain wall in a dull color not to compete with the subject. It looks like you may have used on-board flash or some other bright lighting, and if so, I'd encourage you to explore off camera bounce flash or natural window lighting to get a more subdued look and less reflectivity on the fur, plus avoid the shadows like the one just behind him to the right. I agree with Linda's idea about the framing, or maybe raise the horizontal frame higher and get a little closer, with less chest/more face.

Please do show us some more from this project. Sounds interesting, and you've already solved the problem of what to give the neighbors for Christmas!

Frank2013 Loc: San Antonio, TX. & Milwaukee, WI.

I'll mostly agree with Linda on crop, there is also more detail that could be brought out, and for me the shadow seems distracting. Maybe Uuglypher could confirm but from the looks of that eye the animal is going blind or already is.

Lazy Old Coot Loc: Gainesville, Florida

Thanks Linda. I think you are probably right, but his head was right at the top of the frame right out of the camera, so I didn't have any room to play with there. If i were going to crop it again I would crop off some off of the left side to position him off center with some room to look into on the right side of the frame. It was early evening, under a huge oak tree, he was sitting on an orange lawn chair and would not sit still. I took several shots (with my Nikon Coolpix s9900 a decent point&shoot with a few bells and whistles that I carry with me most of the time). The light was so bad I wasn't able to get anything without motion blur, so I decided to see what I could do with the pop-up flash and this shot was the result. By the way, His owner is a ninety-year-old widow with artificial joints in both knees. The dog is diabetic and requires a shot of Insulin every morning after she get's a urine sample to test so she knows how much Insulin to give him. When I go out to get the paper in the morning She is usually out there, in her pajamas with a plastic cup, trying to get him to pee!!! I've been trying to get a picture of that for a long time but no luck so far. ....... Coot

Lazy Old Coot Loc: Gainesville, Florida

minniev, I think you are quite correct, and if this was a studio shot I probably would have tried to do what you have suggested. however, this was just a catch as catch can opportunity, shot with a Cool-Pix s9900 point and shoot. ........ Coot