Jim Larson Photography

I’ve missed a few opportunities to show off our little white dog, but couldn’t pass up this shot from her 2010 calendar.  Yes, we truly print out calendars every year of various photos taken of her.

This was a very simple setup from a technical point of view.  Alle was sitting on a black piece of plexiglass to give a nice reflection.  The background was black seamless paper and the lighting was a single 2×3 foot softbox.

When shooting pets, or any living subject for that matter, a good starting angle is to get at their eye level and experiment from there.  Make the subject look larger by shooting up at them, or smaller by shooting down.  I was pretty much at eye level with Alle.

It’s winter in Idaho and with that comes fun in the snow.  We are blessed to have a great ski resort just 15 miles from Boise.  On this particular day, there was an occasional hint of blue sky peeking through, but for the most part, it was foggy and sometimes snowing.  This lead to some very flat lighting.  I took my Canon 40D with me this day in hopes for some great shots, but didn’t end up with too much, but did end up with a couple.

Even if the day isn’t the best for shooting, try to make the best of what the day has to give, no matter which end of the camera you are on.

We were invited over to a friend’s house the other day so that we could see their new puppies.  There were about half a dozen of them and they crawled all over each other.  Where do that get all that energy?  It wasn’t too long after their play time that they started to settle down which gave me some time to photograph a non-moving subject.  Here is a straight on shot of one of the little guys.

I’m very surprised that we didn’t take one home with us.

See all the photos at the following link:

More Puppy Photos

Not long after the new goslings hatch, they are off eating all the grass they can, pretty much all day long.  Here is a shot of a mother showing by example how this is done.  I’m sure it is quite instinctive, but it makes for a good title to the photo. 

Here is a photograph I captured last spring and is a glimpse of things to come in just a couple of months.  The place where I work is home to hundreds of Canada geese.  We have a couple of large ponds which the geese love and the general landscaping makes a nice place for the nesting geese.

Of all the places for a goose to lay her eggs, this one decided to nest in a flower pot on the sidewalk just outside our lunchroom.  I’m not sure what the attraction was, but this is where she chose to be home for her new chicks.

This photo is a little more inline for the current season.  Sure we would like to be sailing under a nice blue sky as seen in my prior post, but the snow is this photo turns into water to sail on when summer finally arrives.

We were cross country skiing up a Bogus Basin a few miles from Boise and I liked the image of the parallel lines formed by the ski tracks.  I sat down on the back of my skis an took this shot making sure to leave the tips of my skis in the photo. This puts in some color and to adds more to the storyline of the photo.

Some dear friends of ours took us sailing on their Catalina 22. Their boat is very well equipped, including a sail called a “spinnaker” which is a very large sail generally used for going down wind very fast. It was a perfect day for flying this sail and we did just that.

I made my way up on the bow of the boat with my camera which was equipped with a wide angle lens. I laid on the deck so I could get a good shot at the sail with the nice blue summer sky in the background.

Here is photo of our dog, Alle who is always a welcome gift under the tree.

After getting the last post together, I decided to see what else could be done with the photo.  I first converted it to black and white, then added a sepia tone to give it an old image look.  The last thing I did was to crop the image for more intimate view of my uncle.

Try making changes to some already favorite photos that you may have and you’ll find that there are many pictures inside the original photo.

Which do you like better?

About 9 years ago we had a family reunion up at my parent’s house in the mountains near Boise.  We had a fun time seeing people we had not seen in a while.  My uncle Tracey was one of those people.  He is quite a talented musician and showed off that musicianship with a crosscut saw that he plays with a violin bow.  He can make that saw sing.  Another instrument he plays is the harmonica.  Here is a photograph of him playing under a tree in the yard.

This particular image was captured on film and later scanned with a negative scanner so I could use it digitally.