I am trying to improve my photography skills. I recently ordered the dSLR Photography for Dummies book and have reached out on FB for some other options for taking an online or local course. I would like to thank everyone who responded and provided me with options/info. (you know who you are). I appreciate it! Today is my last day of my mini summer vacation. I took a few days off to help Mitch install the upper kitchen cabinets. I know, sounds like fun, right? It will be so worth it when it is all complete. Long way to go. Installing the lower cabinets and new countertop is the next phase. We hope to have this completed by early December. Today, I have been mainly lounging around the house with the pups. They very much have enjoyed me being home. Maggie will have a rude awakening tomorrow when I go back to work. She may require her Thundershirt and anxiety med. I have not left the house, except to do a Home Visit for VAGA yesterday and to take Maggie to the vet last Thursday. She will freak out on me, I know it, but she will get over it. 🙂 I enjoyed the quality time with all the pups over the last 5 days!
Anywho, I would love some feedback from you on these photos. For now, I am practicing outdoor portraits. I am fortunate to have so many talented photo taking blogging friends and value your opinions. 🙂 I just installed some photo editing software and have been playing around with it today. I usually don’t do anything to my photos except for the occasional cropping. I am trying all sorts of new things. 🙂
For editing, I just used the color enhance function on this photo.
For this photo of Booyah, I edited using color enhance and white balance. Black dogs are tricky to photograph. I hope to learn some good tips/tricks on how to improve. I still like the photo though.
Same editing functions on this one. I love Booyah’s ears and expression. He is always such a happy boy.
Just used color enhance on this one. Cueball is a natural in the sun. He loves to lay around. Makes for an easy subject to practice with.
I look forward to hearing your opinions and tips. 🙂
Loving Life With Hounds 
Those are really beautiful pictures!!
I think the pictures look good! I’m not the person to ask about how to fix them, though. lol The white on the faces gets overexposed really easily, but aside from finding better light, I’m no help! 😛
Thank you Carrie!
with the exception of cueball’s picture (which i really like) all the others are overexposed, especially, as carrie mentioned, the white on their faces. when an area is overexposed it is next to impossible to retrieve any detail with any image-editing software. any attempt to fix it tends to create unnatural-looking processed areas. for practice try taking pictures in open sun again. after taking a picture, preview it and display its histogram. the histogram shows the distribution of dark and light pixels. you want very little of the light curve to touch either the left side (the black pixels) or the right side (the white pixels).
i try to avoid taking pictures of dogs in open sun but i’ll use my flash to fill in some of the shadows.
Thank you Steve! I will try your suggestion. I have a lot to learn. 🙂
i have a lot to learn, too! btw, i was just reading the exif data for one of your pictures (booyah-2.jpg), since you set the aperture at f/5.6, to reduce the overexposure you could lower the ISO to 200 (or even 100). if you leave the ISO as-is (400), you could have stopped down to f/8 or f/11. but using f/8 or f/11 might cause the background to be more in-focus than you want. and doing so will use a slower shutter speed. it’s always a balancing act between shutter speed, ISO, and aperture in order to get a proper exposure of what you’re seeing. just go out and shoot, and have fun!
Thanks again! 🙂
I agree with Steve and Carrie, direct sun, especially in the middle of the day usually gives overexposure. For exposure issues, RAW files are better able to handle any post-editing.
Thank you Gyeong!
I agree with everyone. Direct sun is hard and juggling ISO, shutter speed, aperture and exposure is difficult. I have lost many a photo trying to fiddle with my settings. But we all have more to learn..(I use the histogram a lot too to fix lighting..it does help)
Found you! I’m still trying to get the hang of Google Reader let alone my camera and I wasn’t subscribed to you in it, all fixed. Interesting reading Steve’s comments, not that I understand what he said:) There just isn’t enough time for everything. Oh well, it’s good to have a list of things to do I guess?
I like that you told us how you enhanced the color of these pictures. Good Job!