Dog in the Sun

A few weeks ago my dog was lying in a sunbeam coming through the window.  I thought it would be an excellent photo opportunity, to catch his relaxed expression in the sun.  I took this picture with my Cannon 70D with an 18 – 200mm lens.  This photo was taken with only natural light, at ISO 100 an aperture of F5, a shutter speed of 1/160 at 18mm.  As you can see my dog’s face is slightly over exposed and while the background is dark, you can still see several distracting elements. 

Original

For the final image, I pulled the photo into Lightroom, darkened the exposure, and adjusted the highlights and shadows.  Specifically, I darkened both the highlights and shadows to reduce the distraction in the background. I also added local adjustments to darken the bright spots such as the computer screen, reflections off the chrome on the chair, and the second window.  I then bumped the color saturation and clarity up a little bit. I also adjusted the white balance to warm the image up slightly.  I finally cropped the image two ways to bring the focus onto my dog’s eyes. The firs crop is long crop that shows most of his body, while the second crop focus mostly on his face.  I’m happy with how the final images turned out. 

Long Crop

Tight Crop