These are awesome. This is my first post on this forum, I have been looking for a pet photography forum and just came across this. I would dearly love to learn how to get shots like these, lighting, exposure, etc. I don't mean to be a pest and I hope this hasn't been gone over a bunch already but would you mind telling me what all you used to get these? (camera, lens, lighting?) Thanks!

Welcome DeeDee - you've come to the right place.

Plenty of help, no of the attitude.

Just a great group of folks here.

Thank you for the welcome Duane! This does look like a great place with great people, I will be reading a lot and trying not to ask too many questions. I have been very impressed with what I've seen so far! Hoping, and anxious, to learn.

Hi Dee Dee,

Welcome aboard. We are always excited to have new people on. Also, thank you very much for the compliments on my shots. The sugar gliders were something very different for me to shoot.

The lens I used was the 28-70 F2.8L. It is the 'older' lens and I have owned it since I purchased my D30 in 2000(1?). The lighting was difficult in this situation as the room was very dark. There were three flashes used. Two were bounced off of the cieling. A third flash was positioned slightly higher than head level of the sugar glider behind me and set to a minus 1 exposure.

The two bounced flashes provided the bulk of the light on the subjects. The third flash was to help give the light I wanted directly on the faces of the sugar gliders.

-JM

**SIDEBAR**

Every time I come to this thread, I see the following security error message. This is likely something being picked up by Firefox (which I use), but it exists regardless. Here's what the message says:

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Security Error: Domain Name Mismatch

You have attempted to establish a connection with "www.masterworkphotography.com", however, the security certificate presented belongs to "secure1.valueweb.com". It is possible, though unlikely, that someone may be trying to intercept your communication with this website.

If you suspect the certificate shown does not belong to "www.masterworkphotography.com", please cancel the connection and notify the site administrator.

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Not a big deal - I just click OK each time, but the message may be bothersome of un-nerving to some who may be conmcerned about security. I seriously doubt there is a problem, just a mismatch in how things got registered when the site was set up. No biggie, but I wanted to mention it.

Thanks for the explanation Jim! I wish I could have been a fly on the wall...I just got my camera equipment so have to recover from sticker shock before I can look into a studio type set up, (a simple one) but I am trying to learn all I can now so I'll know what I want. I would never have guessed these guys were in a darker room, looks bright as day. Very cool.

The equipment I just got, to go with my 20D, is canon 70-200 2.8 IS, tamron 28-75 2.8, 580EX flash, and a 1.4 TC. I am an artist by trade (mainly pets, horses, wildlife) so for years I've taken tons of photos of animals to paint from, but only recently have I gotten the bug to really learn about cameras and get better equipment. (the catalyst for this was when I had the opportunity to shoot a national Friesian Horse meeting, so I had all these gorgeous black horses running and doing spectacular things inside a large, fairly dark arena and all I got were blurry grainy blobs *SOB* not even good enough to paint from). I show my longhaired dachshund so have been practicing at indoor dog shows and indoor horse shows and I can do much better now but I'm sure I can still improve a lot yet. I've been very inspired by your work and others I've seen here so far!

Duane I get the same message. I too just click "ok".

That message is because I host my pet photography images on my other site (www.masterworkphotography.com). I figure that since I have a ton of bandwidth there, but not the traffic I see here, that it made sense to keep the photos hosted at masterworkphotography. NWP uses a ton of bandwidth as it is very graphics intensive and I figure I want to 'help out' where I can.

-JM

"I just got my camera equipment so have to recover from sticker shock before I can look into a studio type set up"

Yeah...it is pretty over-whelming. It has become very expensive to pick up photography as a hobby and even more so to do it as a business.

"I would never have guessed these guys were in a darker room, looks bright as day. Very cool."

It was a lot of work. The room was hardly pitch black, just poorly lit. They were doing a ton of home rennovation and I believe that the idea of having me over to shoot the sugar gliders was rather spontaneous.

"The equipment I just got, to go with my 20D, is canon 70-200 2.8 IS, tamron 28-75 2.8, 580EX flash, and a 1.4 TC."

Great choices for lenses. I wish you the best of luck with them.

"I am an artist by trade (mainly pets, horses, wildlife) so for years I've taken tons of photos of animals to paint from, but only recently have I gotten the bug to really learn about cameras and get better equipment."

Being an artist, I am sure you will do great. You should read Ron Reznick's article in the Artist Showcase Section. Many of his photographic influences were not photographers, but painters.

Cheers!
James

Thanks for that suggestion Jim, great article! It's very true about the composition rules being the same for photography, even though until now I never worried much about the background because I would usually paint the animal with a different background, I did find that it was pretty automatic to set it up much like composing a painting. Fun stuff!