Dog days of summer

With the hottest days of summer (usually the day I run the Falmouth Road Race) now hopefully behind us, I have started to make note of which of you who very generously donated to support me in the race, to the benefit of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, have foolishly agreed (at least in-part) to let me photograph you. Or your families. Or your pets… who may or may not react to sudden bursts of light by demonstrating the efficiency of their much-bigger-than-mine teeth.

My friend Corwyn's willingness to a) let me shoot his dogs (with a camera, of course) and b) erect huge, elaborate-yet-relatively-unstable "light modifiers" in his living room led to a lot of laughs, a bit of cursing the auto-focus problems that a dark furry animal against a dark background may give, and a better understanding of this type of "dark field" backlighting… as well as a couple photos in exchange for his donation this year.

Strobist info: The back light used to throw a soft, shapely rim around the dog was an SB-600 behind a vertically hanging large white bed sheet, aimed back at the camera (but blocked from direct line-of-sight by black foam board), zoomed to 35mm and fired at full power. The front light to add just a touch of light to the face and a sparkle in the eyes was an SB-800 in a gridded homemade beauty dish to camera right, zoomed to 24mm and fired at 1/8 power.