Ester Dome

Took some shots of Scout on the Equinox Trail. Peak foliage. Yellow birches and lots of yellow-green aspen. Would tie Scout to a branch or tree and then take pictures from either side of the trail.

Using 50mm prime lens, often at F/1.8 to play with short DOF. Hard to get her just right. She moves around too much. Cloudy afternoon, not much light, coming from the downhill side and well filtered. Shot mostly at 400-800 ISO. Got just two decent shots:

f/1.8
1/400
ISO800
50mm lens (~75mm equivalent)

Yeah, these numbers don't make sense. Why am I shooting at ISO 800 when I can get a good exposure at 1/400? I don't know. But it came out.

f/2.0
1/100
ISO 400
50mm lens (~75mm equivalent)

It feels nice getting all of this pretty blur, but the more I do it the more it feels like a gimmick. Or at least, potentially a cheap way to emphasize a subject. Here I think it fits. Scout is an anxious dog, and that comes in these. She seems alienated from the background. Uncomfortable. I like the top one best. The contour of her face fits into the green-brown transition on the edge of the trail. Her eye comes through well, too.