Speaking of not-sucky pictures of my dog.

A brief description of my thinking behind this photo:

I shot with a medium wide 40mm-equivalent lens because I like to go out with one prime at a time, and as my second favorite lens the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 sits on my GH2 quite a lot. I could have just as easily taken a few steps back and shot it with my #1 favorite lens, a medium-long manual OM 50mm f/1.8 from the 1970s. The wide aperture let me fuzz out the background a bit, creating an illusion of depth between the scenery and Max, the subject. The late-day sunlight is hitting him at a low and oblique angle that is almost head-on. This throws every hair and blade of grass into sharp contrast. Light from a setting sun has to travel through a lot of atmosphere, giving it a warm look (dust scatters blue more than red) and making for a more pleasing portrait. One touch that I particularly like is how the darker background isolates Max in an obvious but natural-looking way. One of the hardest tricks in photography is finding a way to set the picture’s ‘subject’ apart from the scenery. People buy wide-aperture lenses in part because selective focus is a great way to isolate a subject (they also make it easier to shoot in low light). However, IMO, people can go a bit overboard. If one eye is in focus and the other eye is not then you should probably stop down a little.

To me the composition is only so-so. It kind of respects the rule of thirds and definitely leaves space in the direction that the subject is moving/gazing, to the point of being rather unbalanced in that direction, but nothing about the framing makes me say ‘wow’. It is just a nice pic of Max that will go into my regular screensaver rotation.

Chat about whatever.