The elegant whippet

I was digging through old photos looking for a particular image and I came across this one, shot almost exactly a year ago.  This is Tawny (GCh Sporting Fields Bahama Sands) bred by Debbie Butt, and who was on the west coast for a show with her handler (and Debbie’s daughter) Amanda Giles.  I love photographing whippets and had never done a portrait of this dog, so I grabbed Tawny and Amanda and scouted the showgrounds for a place to shoot.  Tawny and Amanda were waiting to go into the ring, so we had perhaps only 10 minutes to get the shot.

We were at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Southern California, and like most fairgrounds it was a lovely place for a fair but didn’t provide any easy options for photographing a dog.  My options for backgrounds were handler RV’s and dog trucks, cars in a parking lot, the white walls of the various buildings, and some dark-colored buildings on a hillside surrounded by white fencing.  I always try to find a background that adds some subtle color to the photo without being distracting, so of the options available the buildings on the hillside seemed to be the best option.

I wanted a shot that would show off the classic curves of this breed, and that would also pull the viewer into Tawny’s dark, soft eyes and sweet expression.  To blur the background and manage depth of field (DOF), I put the background far in the distance and shot with a telephoto lens at a large aperture (Canon 5D II at ISO 400, and Canon EF 70-200mm, f/2.8 L IS USM, at 1/320 at f/4.5).  These settings allowed me a fast shutter speed to freeze any movement, and a shallow depth of field (DOF) that would leave the dog’s head in focus and everything else in soft focus or blurred.

With the focus point on the dog’s near eye, DOF was enough to keep both the far eye and the tip of the nose looking sharp, but the far ear a tiny bit soft.  Your eyes are drawn directly to her eyes, then explore her face – the nose, the ears – then take in the curves of her neck and the symmetrical curves of her topline and underline, then are drawn back to the whiteness and detail of her face.  You can see the tiny whiskers on her chin, the soft fur on the edges of her ears, and the soft dimples on the black of her nose.  It was late enough that the sun was behind the hillside, so we didn’t need to cope with inconvenient shadows and the background was mostly dark.  Some lighter, softly colored areas fell conveniently behind her head, and the white fence at the bottom of the frame isn’t distracting when the shot is cropped close.

When I photograph a dog, the features of the head are critical to get right.  A soft eye, blurry nose, or lack detail in the fur on the head will make an otherwise lovely photo uncompelling.  When you look at Tawny’s portrait, you want to know her, and you want to be moved by her beauty.  If the details aren’t there, this just can’t happen.

This year there have been two lovely whippets ranking among the best hounds in the country.  The other one is Chanel, GCh Starline’s Chanel, who is currently #1 hound, with Tawny right on her tail at #3.  (You can see one of my portraits of Chanel here.)  For whippet lovers it’s been a great year, and at the prestigious shows coming up in the next few months the whippet ring promises to provide a feast for the eyes.

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