I had a great time yesterday at the first ever Chicago Trash the Dress shootout. My many thanks to Melissa Diep for setting it up and making it happen. I was able to meet a lot of very amazing photographers and catch up with a few old friends. My many thanks also go out to the three talented models for being such good sports. Having 15 photographers pointing lenses and shouting out commands is not an easy task!

Here are a few of my favorites. I was hoping for some major trashing of the dresses (i.e. mud, rips in the dresses, etc.), but I was more than happy with what we were able to capture. So my idea going into this shoot was to use a mixture of available light and strobe light. I also wanted to play around with composition and different points of view. I would love to hear your thoughts about these images so feel free to drop me a line. Thanks guys and Rock On!

Thanks guys & see you later! – Contact Me | Wedding Portfolio | Little Ones Portfolio | Older Ones Portfolio

This amazing bulldog belongs to a co-worker of mine. She LOVES her Morty. About a second into meeting him for the first time I could see why. He has this amazing feel and warmth to him that you cannot help but be drawn to him. It’s kind of like when you met your best friend for the first time. You just clicked. I wanted to get down and hug him and wrestle with him, but I figured that would not be the best 1st impression to make on a dog.

I had been wanting to photograph a dog for some time. I really love dogs, but I am allergic to most so owning one anytime soon does not seem to be in my future. I also wanted to give to my co-worker, and I thought that a handful of portraits of her amazing dog would be encouraging. She loved the photos and I had a great time working with Morty.

Prepping For The Shoot
So how do you approach photographing a dog such as Morty? I had a few to ideas:
- One idea was to use an off-camera flash with an umbrella. I would use my 80-200mm zoom and use a Pocket Wizard to blast my flash. This was my preferred method. I thought Morty might stand still long enough to blast off a few flashes. That DID NOT happen.
- My second idea was to go all natural, which is what I ended up doing. There was no way that he was going to stand still. He seemed pretty excited and full of energy that evening. I also really wanted to capture him in his environment and the strobes would have gotten in the way.

The Set-Up
This ended up being a pretty easy shoot in terms of gear. I used the following gear:
- Nikon D700
- Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens
- Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 lens
- Tokina 12-24mm f/4 (this lens rocks!)
- Post processing in Lightroom 2