Day 79 – Stop-Motion Dogs

The other half of my lighting class assignment: photograph a moving subject  without blur.

We tried shooting in the house. No go. So after work tonight we gave it another go in the yard.  I don’t know if I will use either of these for my class, but I wanted to share my learning curve with you.  I’d like to try shooting this in better sunlight, but I likely won’t get the chance as I’m off to Washington D.C. on Thursday and won’t be back until Tuesday (therefore no daytime dog photography before the project is due in class). I may have opportunities in D.C. to try to shoot other photos though.

The first photo below is a “without blur” version of Nina racing around with her toy (see Day 77).  It’s quite interesting how different this one looks. While she was moving just as fast, look how still she looks. The only visual cues to her motion are her flapping ears, her feet off the ground, and her flying dog tag.

Here is Buddy leaping to catch his “Toy.”  And by his “Toy” I mean that it is his only toy. It’s not for lack of trying to introduce other toys to him. He loves this toy and only this toy. It is several years old now and it’s been through the washer a number of times. The squeaker has long since died, but Buddy has never chewed a hole in it.  It stays in the house and every time Buddy comes in he has to find it and loll it about in his mouth. If he can’t he gets really, really nervous and runs around until he does find it.  Anyway, he’s gotten quite good at catching it in mid-air.  Like Nina, he is frozen in time, but his off-the-ground feet and his upside-down dog tag indicate his leap.