After featuring agility competition photos in the first two installments of this series, I’d like to present something a little different and very near and dear to my heart.
In June 2011, I was photographing an agility competition in New Lebanon, NY, on what was a very hot day. One of the nice features near the park where the competition was held, was a shallow stream; I had taken a look at it during the day to get an idea of what the light would do later in the afternoon, because I had an idea.
Our oldest Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Darwin, was well into his 10th year at that time (he is almost 14-1/2 now), and his competition time was coming to an end, as we don’t want to push our dogs past what is good for them. One thing that Darwin always liked to do was have fun (he’s a bit crankier these days, which is just fine), and he loves water. So, my idea was to get some action shots of Darwin running through the stream toward me.
Luckily, this stream has a small drop-off of about 1 foot, which helped me position my camera just above Darwin’s eye level. After a couple of trial runs to get the feel for it, I zeroed in on getting shots like this one, where you can see Darwin’s fun, as he is coming right at you!
Technical Details
This shot was taken with a Canon EOS 1D MkIII, using a 70-200 F2.8L lens. Despite the sunlight, I kept the ISO at 400, so that I could get a shutter speed of 1/400 second at f/8.0, which provides enough depth of field get that smile and some good splash.
Hope you enjoy this one!