I have played around a LOT with this photo and I like it but I'm close to it. Well, I'm not sure about the developing part. Does it work for anybody else? Critiques would be much appreciated.
K10D w/18-55mm kit lens at 55mm, 1/320sec f/8.3, iso800.

[Falcons]

I like the sense of movement in the shot.

[volosong]

I love the "pose" and composition. However, something didn't look "right" to me. Took me awhile to see it. The overall brightness of the image is a little dark. I loaded it into Photoshop and viewed the histogram. It is shifted to the left a bit, as you can see below on the left hand side. I moved the median slider to the peak of the histogram, (as shown below), but then the image had a flat look, lacking in contrast. Bumped up the contrast just a tad, otherwise it would have saturated Spike's forelegs. Still doesn't look "right" to me. Too much gray, but can't figure out how to add some "pop" to the image. maybe someone else can give it a go. I like your image, though. Maybe a double-black duotone? How does the color version look? I noticed that your B&W image is RGB. Maybe you can give us the color version and ask us to try a B&W conversion.

[SuperJared]

EDIT:

I'd like to see more even contrast.

[Eaglerapids]

Thank you for the replys guys.
volosong, I'm in the early stages of dealing with raw files and I'm trying to work out a workflow. I'm shooting raw+ and at first it was .dng but before I took this picture I changed to .pef to check out dealing with that format, so this is a crop from the original .pef converted to.dng converted to .jpg in Lightroom Demo. It looks like I've not done this correctly, I don't know why I didn't go from .pef to .jpg. Anyway, I would love to see what you or anyone can do with this:-).
[img]ftp://www.oldfart.com/Eaglerapids/Spikerun-0307-2.jpg

Looking through the "How to Post pics....." sticky I can't seem to get the picture to come up automatically, perhaps it's because it's ftp rather than http?

[Eaglerapids]

Spike was up to about 75% speed here. His launch is a sight to behold. When I throw the ball he is screaming after it:-). His return has no where the intensity, I'm gonna have to take a friend to the field to throw the ball for me to capture his "launch". Or get a remote and set up the tripod.
He's a little soft after a long winter of laying around leading the good life:-), but he'll work into shape, this dog loves to run.

[photo_mom]

Hi Eaglerapids!

That's a great photo no matter what you do to it! Just the expression of happiness on the dog's face makes it a keeper for me.

I do agree with Steven (Volosong) that it's a bit dark. I like his lightened version. (Nice work Steven!)

[Buschmaster]

Very nice, I love dogs! Very nice capture of the moment!

[Donald]

File Date

View Picture EXIF

Your photo (jpeg anyway) is blurry and very noisey. My steps:

1. ACR noise reduction at default settings.
2. Wand/lasoo a quick path around spike.
3. Duplicate layer, soft light, Opacity 90 / Fill 60.
4. Levels layer, input 200.
steps 3 and 4 were only to improve contrast and depth of otherwise dull contrast photo.
5. Review rgb channels for contrast: red dull, green contrasty, blue contrasty but noisey.
6. Channel mixer layer with settings Red20, Green 60, Blue 40, Contrast -2.
7. Select the path and sharpen spike a little bit, I forgot acctual amount but it was a big brush, one swipe across him at about 20%. This step, as well as step 1, usually isn't necessary when the image is well exposed; maybe your RAW file is better.
8. Invert the path then Burn a very slight shadow under spike. This is strictly my artistic preference: figure ground!
9. Flatten / Greyscale / Duotone with black and warm grey and adjusted each curve / RGB.
10. Resize, save.

I've been doing a lot of black and white work recently, so the above was pretty quick for me. Overall, I believe when converting digital color to Black and white two things are vitally important: a very contrasty image (original exposure or modified in post processing; toned: straight black and white conversion is always very flat, lacking depth, pop, 3d, etc.

By the way, nice looking dog. Greatness can only be achieved with a great model!

[Eaglerapids]

Attachment 2626

Your photo (jpeg anyway) is blurry and very noisey.

I was using continuous focusing at the time and I still missed, I must have missed Spike and hit a few feet behind him:-( and it was early in the morning (before work) and it was shot at ISO800. But still I liked the shot and because of the kind of drab background thought it may be a good b&w photo. Great work Donald, thank you very much for sharing with me your steps.
Every now and then a guy finds a very cool forum full of good people who try to help each other out and share their knowledge of a subject, such as this one:-).
I was out today shooting and I think I learned an exposure lesson, the hard way:-). I've gotta check the pics closer but at first glance I made a big boo boo. But anywho thanks for the replys!!!