more low-key black and white dog photographs

Posted on by Jamie Piper

Some of you may remember the first post I did on low-key black and white shots back in September. It has been awhile since I designed any low-key images, so I decided to pull some shots from recent shoots to see how they fared with the processing. Some were naturals, some took more effort. All done in LR2.

these shots of Addy were practically begging to be converted to low-key b-w.

Apollo as a blond. Love these.

 

I have every confidence that Fergie could hold her own in doggie prison. Or human prison for that matter. In my neighborhood late at night there are some interesting and shady characters, and one night while we were out walking a very drunk woman came swaying toward us, spotted Fergie and then immediately cut us a wide swath in the sidewalk, veering as far away from the dog as possible. She was laughing heartily and said “WHOAHH. NO ONE would want to mess with you with THAT dog, huh huh huh”, laughing all the way. I laughed too because I found the whole thing so funny. I see this photo below and think “Yep, I think she is right”. 🙂

This will be an ongoing series, so expect even more low-key images after this! If you have any requests to see a specific shot in low-key let me know and I’ll be happy to try.

10 thoughts on “more low-key black and white dog photographs”

  1. Some of these are stunning. The treatment definitely doesn’t work for all, but some (my favorites are 2,3,4) are simply excellent. I’d hang that on my wall.

  3. Hey friend, these are super cool and beautiful. Of course, I’m a little partial to the ones of Fergs!

    Hope you have a wonderful holiday and a New Year filled with all good things!

    Lots ‘a love,
    ~L and M

  4. thanks everybody. 🙂 @ nick- it depended on the image. what I do is do a maximum vignette in LR2- so under lens correction I do amount: -100 and midpoint: 0, then increase the blacks and also use fill light. most of the magic is actually done with the luminance sliders. these are still color images- they have not been converted to grayscale. it takes some experimenting and the right image, but you start with 100 contrast and 100 clarity, then play with the sliders from there. vibrance and saturation also make a difference. there is no one preset that works for all images, so the key is really to experiment. with some images you will still have very light spots leftover in the background. in those cases I use the adjustment brush for exposure and underexpose 1 to 1.5 stops in those areas, OR increase the amount and midpoint on the post-crop vignette to see if that takes care of it. but it’s best not to make the background 100% black because then it looks unnatural. hope that helps!

  6. These are great! They remind me a lot of Traer Scott’s photos in the book Shelter Dogs. Great photo dog lover book if you haven’t seen it. Your pics the dogs look much happier 🙂

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