Black Lab

Thoughts on this one?

IMAGE LINK: https://photos.smugmug​.com …19-PsEdit-XL.jpg&lb=1&s=A

It's really good! It has a real sense of authenticity about it.

The only "eye-twitcher" would be his paw cut off on the right side of the frame.

One other thing you could do, is somehow control and "stage" the background to be more complimentary, without looking set-up or staged. As it is, it is not totally distracting, but the vertical and horizontal shapes do keep attracting my eyes.

Beautiful model!

swbkrun wrote in post #18713339
Thoughts on this one?

IMAGE LINK: https://photos.smugmug​.com …19-PsEdit-XL.jpg&lb=1&s=A on Smugmug

Good image. Nice light modeling his hair. I'd rather not see those highlights in the leather though.

Thank you both....

Good catch lights in the eyes. My only issue is bringing down the high lights in the leather - bring that down and I think you for sure have a keeper, unless your trying to have a contest grade image. But I see very few technical issues here.

Not bad! I'd watch the crop and try to keep all of his paw in as mentioned. Also, the highlights in the leather are distracting. The background - brick or whatever it is also is distracting. That's easy enough to throw an adjustment layer on and bring down the brightness in some way. Also perhaps bring the brightness on the vertical lines behind down some as well. Not quite as distracting as the brick portion. Just a tad down on the brightness on those I think. My eye wanders back to those areas.

I think you did a wonderful job on the lighting. I have a black dog and know how difficult it can be not to have all of the light sucked in by the black coat. I also agree with some of the others, that it would have been nice to have included all of the left front paw.

Others have also mentioned the bright background portions and the shine on the ottoman, especially on the left side of the image. If it were my image, I would crop all of that out. I'd change the crop to a 5x7 and crop the ottoman on the bottom right to just below his left paw. I'd then crop from the top left down to just past his collar. In camera RAW, I'd also reduce the Whites a little to make the shine on the ottoman a little less noticeable. This would basically leave you with a head shot that included his front paws and a small portion of the ottoman. By cropping out all the unessential portions, it allows your viewer to concentrate on those eyes and IMHO, that's what this shot is all about and it doesn't need the portion of his body that is out of focus.

Fine as it is. Eyes and nose sharp. Shot's a winner!

Great feedback all... I will try and reshoot this gal and see what I can come up with.

Better?

IMAGE LINK: https://photos.smugmug​.com …-PsEdit-2-XL.jpg&lb=1&s=A

The expression caught in the first image combined with the visible body line make it seem the better one to me.

Blacks in the first one look better to me.
Don

Yeah the blacks are out of whack now. It seems that to reduce the background distractions you've lightened things up, rather than darkened down just the background portion. The dog was exposed very nicely in the original.

1st shot is great! Expression is spot on and eyes/nose are nice and sharp.

I like the first one more. The blacks are much nicer.