Leap!

First of all, I apologise for not posting recently. It's been crazy!! I've been so busy that I've really had time to do very little, I almost even gave up trying to get an entry for the weekly photo challenge! It didn't help that someone decided to drive in to the back of my car in Coventry on Sunday afternoon.... *grumble grumble*...

Anyway, last weeks challenge was entitled 'Leap' which was quite fitting since we had a leap day last week! I knew straight away what I was going to try and get a photo of, but also knew that it was going to be REALLY hard to find the time to do it! My Jack Russell, Buster, is particularly hyper-active and seems to enjoy leaping from settee to settee in my lounge at home.

My plan was to use my 90mm f2.4 lens to capture him mid-air, so I set a shutter speed of around 1/200 of a second and opened my aperture up. Unfortunately, despite all of the lights in the house being on, there just wasn't enough light to get a decent picture as it was getting late. Combine this with the focal length of this lens, and the margin for error was annoyingly small.

A different approach was required, I switched to my 18-200mm lens and reached for my SB-700 speedlight. I'd wanted to try to avoid using a flash, as I don't like how it removes the warmer colours from the photo.

Anyway, after several attempts I got this shot... It was getting late and I decided 'that'll do'. I swiftly uploaded, and submitted it to the challenge.

 

There are several things I'm unhappy with (being unable to remove my sister from the shot on the left, the reflection from the mirror, how Buster is slightly over-exposed etc... etc...), but out of nearly 140 photos this was the best.You can view the rest of the results here.

Whilst my camera was out I managed to get a few nice photos of the dogs though, which was an added bonus...

The challenge set on 06/03/2012 is called Wildlife, one of my favorite subjects, so watch this space for next weeks entry!