Jim - I've seen alot of agility photos - most indoor. And this is one of the best I've ever seen. Yeah - I'm a sucker for a merle dog. He looks gorgeous and intent coming out of that tunnel. And the composition on this is really striking - it's often hard to get nice composition while also capturing intense action.

I could see this on the cover of Clean Run ! Or at least included inside one of the issues.

Thanks Meewolfie!

I really love the merles too. We had a blue-merle Sheltie when I was a kid.

How funny you mentioned Clean Run. I've been talking with them lately. They prefer outdoor images and require portrait orientation for cover shots

I have no idea what the "norm" is in the dog world, but their payment schedule seems a bit on the low side to me. Again, I really have nothing to base that on since I've not really done a lot of publishing research on the pet side of the house.

Jim, it would be easy to crop this into a vertical photo. They want outdoor shots because of the noise issue of the indoor ones. The purple fringing and high iso issues are fairly evident in this photo. It would not reproduce well as a cover. The one you posted with the sheep would.

I have attached a crop of that photo. I have built extra into a top of a photo in PS for covers. They really can't use horizontal orientation as the covers are vertical

Thanks Julie,

I know the reasons why the want vertical and outdoor shots. They also want shots with nice backgrounds etc which means setting up for the shot rather than setting up to cover the event for the handlers. I suppose there is room to do both at an event with multiple runs of the same dog though.

Clean run goes on to specify minimum resolutions with no software manipulation, etc. Even if this shot were technically perfect, they wouldn't accept it based on the limitations they put in their image guidelines.

That being said Moose Peterson (yes, I know wildlife and dog sports are two different things) says that published guidelines are there to keep the GWC's (Guys with cameras) out and that the "real pros" submit good images regardless of whether they meet the published guidelines.

I suppose he has a good point since Clean Run's guidelines also require that images be _shot_ in JPG, but when I talked to them they told me that RAW converted to JPG is just fine.

If this shot didn't have the issues of indoor, high ISO shooting, I could probably crop the middle out, re-sample it up, add some to the top (which Clean run specifically prohibits) and they would never know the difference. Whether or not I would do that is a whole different discussion.