Speed

Feedback appreciated as always.

It seems like with these little fluffy dogs my theme has been "little dogs are dogs too"

First one looks like he/she is pooping and the second like he/she is posing with the butt pointed like a skunk

I think you are going to want to use a MUCH slower shutter and good panning technique to convey a sense of speed.

A little more room at the front for him to "run into" would have been nice.

Nothing wrong with these shots, but we're getting a balcony view and that's not very interesting because we always see dogs this way, looking down on them. Instead try getting down to the dog's eye level. That will draw us right in, make the shot more intimate. So get dirty, lie on your belly and then shoot him again.

Just my opinion of course.

Losing the wall in the background is also a good idea, as it is quite distracting sitting up at the op there. If I were doing this I would also hope to remember to clean up the area of distracting items, such as the old brown leaf in the first shot, but my memory as it is I would probably fail on that. As Frank says, I would go with a much slower shutter speed and pan, that will give a much better sense of speed for little dogs like this one. Freezing the action for a large dog can work, since you have a much greater separation from the subject to the ground, emphasizing the action. For that to work with a little one you would need for it to be jumping off something to get that required mid air effect. Since you want the maximum of background blur from the pan, I would try to get as close as possible to the dog, without introducing perspective distortion, so that the angular speed is as high as possible. So I would only be considering using something in the normal focal length range. Although a longer focal length would work really well from a DoF point, and the added distance would introduce a pleasing flattening of perspective you end up losing the angular speed, unless the dog runs really quickly.

Alan

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #18059308
Nothing wrong with these shots, but we're getting a balcony view and that's not very interesting because we always see dogs this way, looking down on them. Instead try getting down to the dog's eye level. That will draw us right in, make the shot more intimate. So get dirty, lie on your belly and then shoot him again.

Levina is spot-on. Animals are usually photographed most effectively by shooting from eye-level. Their eye-level. So in this case a very effective point-of-view would be to shoot from a position in which the camera is about 8 or 10 inches off the ground.

No matter what it is that one is shooting - whether it be kids, animals, or inanimage objects - top results will seldom be had by standing at regular height and aiming the camera down at something that is lower.

Other than the too-high point of view, these are very nicely done......good timing, good use of ambient light, good composition.

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