Louie's Midnight Snack . . .
By
John Terence Turner
Stock Asylum Columnist
April 1, 2006
©
2006 John Terence Turner
Dog owners are shamelessly anthropomorphic—that’s much of
the enjoyment of having a dog. We’re always ascribing human motives
to their behavior and imagining human-like thoughts in their canine
minds. That’s how this shot came about. I thought my dog Louie
would really enjoy raiding the refrigerator for a midnight snack. Louie
is an intelligent, affectionate 60-pound Standard Poodle of three and
a half years.
 The key to creating this photograph was balancing two sources of available light and, of course, getting Louie, the 60-pound Standard Poodle, to cooperate. ( © John Terence Turner ). |
The next step was making a picture of the idea. Photographers frequently must create images illustrating an idea. The challenge involves making good choices about the visual elements that convey the idea to the viewer.
The concept of a midnight snack suggests darkness with deep blue nighttime shadows. The light inside the refrigerator is pretty bright, so I decided to use that tungsten light as the only artificial illumination.
Often the best photographs are those using contrast to draw the viewer’s eye to the important part of the picture. In this case, Louie is backlit by the light inside the refrigerator, but is not quite a silhouette. The viewer’s eye is drawn to him because his hair (poodles do not have fur) is outlined by the refrigerator light.
Exposing for the refrigerator illumination during the evening when the light in the refrigerator was brighter than the ambient daylight, created a shadowy look in the rest of the kitchen. The blueness was achieved by setting the Kelvin temperature of the digital camera at a chilly 2500° (the lower the number the bluer the color balance). In the days before digital cameras, I would have selected a tungsten film and perhaps I would have augmented that with blue filters.
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For reference, mid-day sunlight has a Kelvin temperature of about 5500°. Tungsten light sources, like common household light bulbs, are rated at about 3200° Kelvin or even a little lower. Tungsten lights are much warmer than daylight and can turn an image orange in some cases.
The human eye and brain compensate for such color differences. Film cannot, which is why professional photographers traditionally carried special films and color-correction filters in their camera bags. Digital cameras offer some fairly easy ways to properly balance color, but cannot always handle scenes lit by several light sources of different Kelvin temperatures. This can sometimes be a problem or, as in this case, a pleasing creative device.
I placed the Nikon D2x with a Nikkor 12-24mm zoom lens on a tripod about one foot above the floor. Louie doesn’t completely freeze when commanded, and when confronted with a Milk Bone, his tail is likely to start wagging, so I upped the ISO rating to 400 to get a little faster shutter speed.
To ensure contrast between the refrigerator and the dog, and thus attract the viewer’s eye, a compromise in exposure must be made. The difference between the light on the top shelf of the refrigerator and the room outside was more than three stops. If I used the top shelf reading, the viewer would have a good inventory of its contents, but everything beyond that would be too dark. If I used the reading off Louie’s lower back, the room would lose the dark shadows that say nighttime. So I compromised and shot at 1/15th of a second at f4.
That exposure provided some detail in the top of the refrigerator, but it also retained good (albeit shadowy) detail on Louie’s back and the rest of the room. It’s all a matter of taste, but that was my decision and I am sticking with it.
Then I showed Louie half a big Milk Bone (not having anything else to do, he’d been hanging around — probably hoping for something like this).
I waved the treat under Louie’s nose and he eagerly followed it to the shelf of the refrigerator where I put it. Once I placed it there, he hastily backed up and sat down, never taking his eye off the treat.
I got back on the floor behind the camera and said, “OK, Louie, get your treat.” Much to my surprise, instead of going into the refrigerator, he got up and moved back from his spot and sat down beside me — never losing sight of the Milk Bone. He was thinking, “ Oh no, I’m not gonna fall for that. Poodles don’t get into refrigerators.”
I had to repeat the temptation and permission two more times before he went for the Milk Bone. Then, with his prize clenched between his teeth and his head held high, Louie trotted triumphantly into the next room to devour it.
But, during that one moment, I got the shot. And Louie got his treat.
This is a new shot so it hasn’t sold yet, but it is going up soon on the Getty web site.
(John Terence Turner has been shooting stock photography for 20 years. His work can be seen at Getty Images, Alamy and, of course, The Stock Asylum, where his column appears twice a month. He lives and works in Seattle, WA.)
Turner's web site can be found at: http://www.johnterenceturner.com.
For more of his images: click here.
For all of Turner's columns: click here.
