Street dogs

Not actually on a street but close enough, appearance-wise.

Photo Set: Animals (B&W)

In alphabetical order, I suppose:

 Gullwings. One up, one down.

 Power-pigeons. Grime and grime.

Sausages in the park.

 Trellick pigeon. I tried to focus on the bird but AF chose the building instead. Oh well.

Webdrops. 35mm goodness after the rain.

Chihuahua

Just playing with colour levels and shooting from-the-hip while on-the-move.

Should I have composed and centred the shot? Probably.
Do I care in this case? Nope.

Running Samoyed

An exercise in making my average performing Tamron lens feel a bit less average.

After learning about increasing exposure compensation to enable faster shutter speeds I had to give it a real-world test. An overcast day and a hyperactive dog seemed like the ideal combination. I fired off a couple of shots at this fast moving Samoyed and this one was the best.

Lens was at full zoom (270mm, which vignettes like mad!), ISO 800 and shutter speed 1/1000. Just a little editing in post to bring some contrast back to the image.

Askal

My aunt's dog in the Philippines. I forget his name. He's a mutt, commonly known as an askal.

When I met him for the first time he was extremely wary of me. Being a new face/smell he wasn't used to me at all and every time I got even a little bit close to him he would panic and bark his little head off. When I went back to my aunt's house a few days later, it was as if the previous day never happened; he was wagging his tail, hopping up on his hind legs and licking my hand. Endless licking. He even did that puppy thing where he would gently bite on my finger like he was teething, but always being aware to not actually crunch my digit in his mouth.

Just like that.

I did the old point & shoot and managed to get him licking his nose. It's a bit blurry because I just stuck to Program Auto mode and it picked a pretty wide aperture/slow shutter speed on my 35mm prime. I only learned how to use a fast shutter with exposure compensation a few weeks ago (me = still a noob) which would have given a sharper shot, but I like the blurriness that came as a result.

I made sure to let him nibble my finger after.

A dog and his balloon

So far December hasn't disappointed at all. It's cold and dreary, and everybody is bundled up in big dark coats, gloves and scarves. So it's always nice to see something more cheery, colourful and a little different around this time of year.

And to think I was going to put my camera away because my fingers were getting cold... pfft. Moment almost missed.

...and his master

I saw this man looking intently at his dog, and for a second the dog looked at him then looked away just as quickly. It's like a role reversal, normally dogs are keen for their owner's attention while the owner gets on with his day but this dog seemed distracted, perhaps bored. Maybe he was expecting to chase a ball or a stick instead of sitting on the grass and be stared at. Or there's a squirrel somewhere in the trees.

Deep concentration, on both sides, on different things.