Project 52 – Week 24 – Blur

Friday morning means a new Project 52 post for you to feast your eyes on.  Some of the members of the Beautiful Beasties Network (a professional pet photographers’ forum) are taking on the challenge of doing pet-related photography, with a theme that changes every week, for an entire year.  The goal is to start shooting outside the box, to challenge ourselves as photographers and to expand our vision and talents.  So far I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my participation, and I have learned to look at my dogs and their accoutrements in a different light (and at a different angle).

This week’s theme is Blur, and photographer Dana Cubbage gave us free reign to use blur however we wanted to.  Because I’ve missed two weeks in a row due to work, I was determined not to miss this week.  I really enjoy taking part in Project 52 and miss it when I can’t participate.

This week I even managed to shoot other dogs than mine own, which might come as a relief to some of my faithful blog readers.  A breeder friend of mine sold a puppy local to me, so I went to visit him and soak up the puppy breath.  He was the best kind of chocolate – calorie-free!

Jersey and his toy

The blur I chose to use is called bokeh – bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image (thank you Wikipedia for this definition).  Because I shoot at low aperture (usually 2.8), my images often have nice bokeh to them.  I love how it brings the subject into focus and makes backgrounds less ugly and busy.

Here`s another photo with nice bokeh . . . this is Savvy, a Papillon that belongs to a friend.  I could get lost in those eyes . . .

I you’ve enjoying seeing my use of blur.  As this is a blog ring, please continue on to North Carolina pet photographer Steph Skardal’s blog for more awesome photos at http://stephskardal.com/52-project-blur/ .  Once you’re done with Steph’s blog, keep clicking through the links at the end of each blog until you get back here, and you’ll have seen all of the Project 52 blog posts for this week.