The Staffordshire Bull Terrier

The Staffordshire Bull Terrier is a medium sized, stocky, muscular dog with great athletic ability. They have a broad head, defined muscles, a relatively short face, a wide mouth with a clean bite.

They have small ears and cheek muscles that are very pronounced on a head that tapers down to a strong well muscled neck and shoulders placed on squarely spaced forelimbs.

They are coloured brindle, black, red, fawn, blue, white, or any mixture and the coat is smooth and clings tightly to the body giving the dog a streamlined appearance.

The dogs stand 36 to 41 cm tall and weigh 15 to 25 kg, the 'Staffordshire Bull Terrier' can suffer from health problems common to other dog breeds such as cataracts, hip dysplasia and breathing problems but are overall a very healthy breed.

The dominant temperament is its character of indomitable courage, high intelligence matched with a quietness and trustworthy stability. This, coupled with its affection for its family, children in particular, make it appear in the list for the top 10 breeds most suitable for families and children.

Spring colour

A mural on a wall of a boat hire place in Mordialloc, Melbourne Victoria.

Nikon D300, 70-200mm 2.8, ISO 200, 86mm, f 2.8 1/4000 sec

Spring flowers by the side of the highway, somewhere in southern NSW

Nikon D300, 70-200mm 2.8, ISO 200, 200mm, f 2.8 1/500 sec

A flower at my Mums place in Bendigo Victoria

Nikon D300, 70-200mm 2.8, ISO 800, 200mm, f 2.8 1/2500 sec

My brothers dog 'Chester' watching me suspiciously

Nikon D300, 105 mm 2.8, ISO 200, 105mm, f 2.8 1/3200 sec

Cacti, again at my Mums in Bendigo Victoria

Nikon D300, 70-200mm 2.8, ISO 800, 200mm, f 3.2 1/1250 sec

Light II

Some more lighting situations . . .

High contrast sun and shadow.

Diffused light through a screen door. This is a merged image made from two shots, one focused on the door, and the second focused on the people outside then manipulated in Photoshop CS4.

This image is high contrast but boosted front light with a SB-900 flash.

Depth of Field

The Nikon 105mm lens, creates a narrow depth of field, generally depth of field is inversely proportional to focal length of a lens. For any given focal length, the depth of field varies directly with the aperture selected. That is, the wider the aperture (e.g. f2.8) the shallower the depth of field. If you use f22 you can maximize depth of field (the width of the focus area in sharp focus). Most lenses are considered to be at its sharpest at about 2 or 3 stops down from widest aperture, that is at f5.6 or f8, so you sacrifice sharpness if you maximize depth of field. Also pleasing bokeh (blurring of the background) is also effected as you widen aperture say to f-stop number f2.8 in a fast lens.

In this image of Hermione's eye you can see the band of sharp focus, the depth of Field (DOF)

D300, ISO 200, f 3.3 1/500 sec.

I have darkened the image so you can see this more pronounced. Interesting heh?

Light

We see things using light, light is all our eyes can really see. Visible light appears to be colourless or white and although we can see this light, white is not considered to be part of the visible spectrum because white light is not the light of a single color, or frequency. It is made up of many color frequencies which is why when sunlight passes through a glass of water and lands on a wall you see a rainbow. If you shine the colours red, green and blue in a light and them overlap, you will see magenta. Mixing light where red and green light overlap, you will see yellow. Where green and blue light overlap, you will see cyan. You will notice that white light can be made by various combinations, such as yellow with blue, magenta with green, cyan with red, and by mixing all of the colors together.

Most colour we see is reflected light, like paint or dye molecules that absorb specific frequencies of light and bounce back, or reflect, other frequencies to your eye. The reflected frequency is the color of the object. There are some rules for light, for instance light travels in a straight line, the farther you are from a light source, the dimmer the light and the angle that a light hits a surface (the angle of incidence) is the same as the angle the light bounces off the surface (the angle of refraction).

The larger and closer the light source the softer the light and the further away the light the harder the light, it will have stark shadows. The character and quality of a photograph can be altered by the character and quality of light, so you need to think about how a scene should be lit, what lighting angles get good results, and what exposure settings will bring out the best detail and shading. A hard light (the light source is further away) will generate dark shadows and the direction of the light can place shadows in unattractive positions of a subject. One solution is to diffuse the light. Diffused light is softer and does not cast strong shadows. An overcast day is perfect for a lot of photography for this reason, the sunlight is diffused by clouds. the down side being that a white sky makes a very ordinary photographic backdrop.

Just to lighten the mood :-)