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Internationally-renowned, award-winning animal photographer Illona Haus created scruffy dog photography inc. as the province's premier pet photography business which continues to serve clients across Ontario, the US and the world. Based in Kitchener, Ontario and photographing exclusively animals for fifteen years - both commercially and for private clients - Illona is considered one of the world's leading and most influential pet photographers.

 

To learn more about the scruffy dog photography, its creator and history, and the scruffy dog experience, feel free to browse through the menu above, and scroll through over a decade's worth of blog entries below!

 

Please drop me a line! I'd love the opportunity to capture stunning, creative, one-of-a-kind photographic memories of your 4-legged loved ones to treasure in artwork for a lifetime, and show you just what makes the scruffy dog experience second to none.

Just a peek at image editing – Ontario professional pet photographer

I’ve been photographing exclusively animals – dogs and the occasional cat and horse and a few other critters – for over 15 years now.  In that time I have gone through almost a dozen professional camera bodies, too many pro lenses to count, Nikon and Canon, several camera bags, jerry-rigged carts and trollies, not to mention hundreds of pounds of dog treats and too many session toys to count.

I’ve also gone through five different custom-built computer systems and high-end Eizo monitors for the editing portion of things, which – when it comes to dogs and a natural setting – is a huge component of the images you have seen here over the years.  And I must say – as I always say to fellow photographers I mentor – no matter what, you have to start with a solid, high-quality and perfectly-exposed RAW image to begin with.

For example … let’s look at this image of the stunning and VERY well trained Quill.  Here is the image straight-out-of-camera.

This image is taken at 1/640 sec at f/3.5, ISO 500 with Canon’s 1DX iii and 70-200 f/2.8 ii.  I would have preferred to have shot this at 200mm, but there was no way for me to back up any farther in the deep snow, so it was shot at 70mm.

Now, after so many years photographing dogs, you wanna bet I know better than to start shooting until I’ve had an opportunity to clear any distracting elements like all those dead weeds.  In fact, I even carry a pair of secateurs in my camera bag.  However, on this day, the snow between Quill and I is hip deep, and for this shot, I am actually sitting back in the snow as though I were sitting in a chair, it was that that incredibly deep.  Prior to this shot, we were having Quill run through this deep snow for some stellar action shots, so here was an instance where I could neither get to the weeds, nor did I want to trample the snow before we’d captured those running shots through fresh snow.

So … all I could do – as he stood so proudly in that opening in the cedars – is shoot.

Next we see the same image with my standard editing in LR. Again, we always start with a high quality RAW image … and – from my perspective – editing isn’t about fixing mistakes made in the field or creating something that was never there.  Editing is about shifting the image you shot into the image you SAW.

Yes, when I sit hip-deep in the snow and ask Quill’s mom to stop him in that opening, I am absolutely seeing in my mind the burst of colour the cedars provide in this cold, white landscape … and I absolutely see the glow and light coming from the trail on the other side of this cedar patch.  But the camera doesn’t see all of these nuances.  Its job is to find neutral grey for its white balance and essentially ‘flatten’ that expansive, breathing landscape you see with your eyes.

So it is my vision that dictates the editing I do … and in fact, it is the editing I know I am capable of that allows me to have that vision in the first place and know what look for and see when I am in the field.

… definitely improvement over the flatter, rather monotone image straight-out-of-camera, but man, all those stupid, distracting weeds!

So this is where I will take that image, still in LR, and edit it as a tiff in photoshop (as I prefer to keep my workflow on the images all in the same LR catalog).

With this next image – while Quill looks smaller in the frame – I have actually increased the canvas size and resolution of this image from 5472 x 3648 to 6072 x 3992.  This way – should the client decide to have this image printed as a larger print, a canvas, or perhaps a full spread in a custom album – I have even more pixels to work with.

So, in photoshop, I first increase my ‘canvas size’. Then I figure out the best way to tackle those horribly distracting dead weeds.  In this case, the best approach was to copy some of the cedars and use that to cover some of the weeds; and to use a combination of the cloning stamp and very careful content-aware fill – while zoomed in by 200 or 300% – to get rid of the weeds in front of Quill’s body and to the right of the frame.

And for those wondering about the amount of work done an image like this before the client even receives the gallery … well, yes, I do put that work in with a very limited number of images.  Most of the images receive no more than my personal LR editing – which is still a LOT of time investment into each image – and with only a few do I conduct this kind of more extensive work.  I do this for a couple of reasons … I might want to share that image on social media … but mostly, I want to my client to know what is possible with their images.  I would hate for a client to not choose a particular image simply because of some distracting weeds.

There are two more images of Quill in this setting … one where he is looking dead into the camera, and the other where he is panting and looking to his left.  I will likely put all three of the images in the client’s gallery, but only this one will receive that fuller extent of editing until I know if the client wants any of them in print.

Of course, sometimes I just like to have a little laugh with an image and a fun client, especially one who knows her super handsome dog is really a fun-loving dufus …

While culling Quill’s images the other day, I thought that this image – with the placement of his feet – looked as though he was doing some ballet instead of catching the ball …

I could see it in my mind!  … and I was already giggling when I went back to his images to find a usable ‘head’ … pasted it on his body and sent it to his mom who probably laughed as hard as I did.  It is SO Quill … like: “what? nothing to see here. I’ll just pirouette on over this way.”

And sure enough, in the same moment I received her response about a adding a tutu, I was already on a stock site searching for a png of the right pink tutu.  Of course, the funniest part in all of this is that THIS image is more true to Quill’s fun-loving, dufus, comical character than the first image I shared.  LOL

I hope you enjoy Quill’s image.  Of course, this boy is a rare model in the level of training that has gone into him.  I do have clients with dogs at similar levels, who can be off-leash and even collarless, but at least 90% of my clients over these many years need to keep their dogs on leash, and THAT’S OK!   There are ways around all of that as well – in the field and back at the computer – and I will try to share some more of that kind of shooting and editing content in upcoming blog entries.

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    Stella & Wiser are back ~ Ontario pet photographer

    Oh gosh … I wish I could blame Covid on my utter lack of blogging these past years, but my delinquency in keeping up began long before the pandemic.  While it does take time to mount a single blog post and prep the images, it’s mostly the written content that makes the task seem arduous at times, causing even further procrastination.  I grow farther and farther behind, and as the time stretches between the sessions and the posts, I struggle to know what to write about sessions that took place so long ago.  So … I’m going to try to worry less about written content, and focus on the images.  After all, does anyone really READ the copy?  Or are you just all here for the pretty pictures of pets?

    And then, of course, there is the question as to how many people actually DO come to see blog posts, as blogging seems like such a thing of the past.  So … PLEASEif you are reading this, and you would love to see more blog entries, PLEASE drop a comment below so that I can weigh the value of posting more.

    Today’s post is about two red dogs: Stella and her littermate Wiser.  I first met these two back in 2014 on a beautiful summer afternoon down in Long Point and the lovely shores of Lake Erie.

    We captured so many fun images of these two jockeying for the ball and engaging in lengthy games of keepaway with each other.

    At the time, Stella and Wiser were living in BC, and had flown with their guardians to Ontario.  But today – 8 years later – these two now reside in southern Ontario, and I was delighted when they made the trip to scruffy dog region for another session.  And what fun to be able to shoot a winter session for these two beach-bums!

    Eight years hasn’t seemed to make a big dent in the energy level of these two.  Sure, Stella has a few more white hairs, and Wiser … well, he’s just gotten wiser, I guess.  And they’re still playing keepaway with whatever ball I throw at them.

    Of course, with any winter session, the dogs always have a blast … while I am either kneeling hip-deep in snow, or even lying in it sometimes.  Note to self: do invest in a better pair of insulated, waterproof pants.

    Also, in regards to winter sessions … so many people worry that a winter session with not only be uncomfortable (trust me, I keep my winter dates extremely flexible and work around the temperatures), but they assume that the images will be boring … that every image will  be a backdrop of just snow, snow and more snow.   But that is far from the case!  I choose our locations very carefully, and – no matter what the season – will always strive for a wide variety of settings, vegetation, light, tones, textures, etc.

    Thank you, Bernadette and Jordan, for once again trusting me to be the one to capture these photo-memories of your two amazing companions.  It is always a pleasure to spend time with you and the red dogs!

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      catching up

      Well, it appears that it’s been over two years since my last blog entry.  As a one-woman show, running an incorporated business single-handedly, acting as photographer, dog wrangler, photo editor, office manager and CEO, publicist, marketer, social media associate, customer service rep and liaison, accountant,   … and with so many social media platforms now, it’s virtually impossible to excel in all positions I hold in this small business.  As a result, it would appear that the blog has been grossly neglected.

       

      So … before I tackle any blog entries about the past two years and the affect Covid has had on the business, me personally, and the scruffies, I figure I can at least share some of the images of clients over the past two years.  These are images which have been posted on the scruffy dog Facebook page and/or the scruffy Instagram page … so if you’re ever needing to see the latest from SDP, you might consider following me there.

       

      In the meantime, here are some images from just a few of the urban sessions I’ve shot …

       

      Carlos and Pepe came from Toronto for their session. These two little men rocked their Doggles and their entire scruffy session.

       

      But urban sessions aren’t just for mature and senior dogs … check out young, flatcoated retriever Enzo, who added a ‘booster’ to his puppy session so that we included a good handful of urban shots.

       

      And the very handsome Hank – a smooth-coated Brussels Griffon – travelled from Toronto with his sister Murfy, who has been a long-time regular of scruffy dog since 2013, having had numerous sessions over the years.

       

      And even with urban sessions, we often find spots downtown that allow us to shoot some more natural images as we seek out long grasses and other foliage.

      Stay tuned here on the blog for more urban session images and many more!

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