Shooting the dogs

Shooting the dogs, originally uploaded by photogeek21.

A couple firsts for me on this recent family portrait shoot with the Green Family. It was my first time setting up remotely. Which is pretty nerve racking because I didn't know how much room I had to work with and the time pressure is there - I didn't want to spend all day setting up and taking test exposures while everybody's waiting. So I kept the lighting pretty simple and adjusted on the fly which did two things - It got the family a bit more comfortable in front of the camera and it gave the impression I knew what I was doing. By the time my exposure was dialed in everybody shook their shyness and we started having fun.
And speaking of fun, after getting a couple shots of this family of 5, they brought in their dogs for some shots - All 5 of them!. Now this was first for me as well - I though getting 5 people comfortable in front of a camera was tough - adding 5 dogs certainly up'ed the excitement...and the difficultly. Needless to say it was a shoot early and shoot often session with the dogs as they don't stay still for very long.