2024 Wine Country Circuit Dog Show

I love this dog show event. There is so much happening all the time. Dogs and people running this way and that. And I get to spend the day at a beautiful state park.

Weather can always be a factor. And it was definitely a big factor for me this year. I have been coming to this show for 14 years. I love it every time. But being out in bad weather becomes less tolerable with time as I have accumulated more and more photos of beautiful dogs over the years.

But I had a great time adventuring in the Finger lakes region of New York for 4 days.

Day one

One of the things I love about this event is that just about anything can happen. That goes for activities with the dogs. Talking to the people. And especially the weather.

I go to this dog show every year in large part because it is outdoors at a beautiful state park here in New York. But that makes you vulnerable to weather. I am always impressed with the way the judges, the participants, and especially the volunteers handle the bad weather days during this event. To me it is part of what makes this event special. That extra variable that really lets certain individuals both dogs and humans really shine.

Rain

The first day was a pretty dark, gloomy, and rainy day. It rained pretty consistently for the first couple of hours of the dog show. It wasn’t a hard rain, but it was consistent. Just enough that you couldn’t just stand out in the open without getting pretty wet after several minutes.

For once I was prepared and brought and wore my raincoat and I had boots on. The dog show is always prepared with enormous circus like tents for the participants and spectators alike to gather underneath. That is where I spent a large portion of the day.

Since I wanted to stay out of the rain as much as possible I went to the tent where I saw some of the breeds I really like gathering. And since it was dark and gloomy I would be shooting with my Nikon 70-200 f2.8 lens. That meant I couldn’t get the really close up shot sI liked. So I wanted to try and stick to more larger breed dogs.

As the day went on it mostly stopped raining. So, that gave me more freedom to move around. There was still an errant sprinkle here and there, but nothing that sent me running for cover under the tents. And that is really helpful, because then I can really move around and capture photos from the positions and angles I really prefer.

Getting brighter

It even began to get brighter outside. It was still completely overcast but it wasn’t so dark. It was like having a natural soft box for my photos. The soft diffuse light can really be great for photography in the middle of the day when the lighting can get harsh if it is full sun. It also helps because when the sun is out it can cast harsh shadows and be behind the subject as they walk towards me, which is not ideal. It is always nice to have the subject walking towards the light so their face is illuminated. But I do not have control of the position of the sun or the direction the dogs walk. The bad weather can be a blessing in disguise in some ways.

Later in the day I went and watched the dogs running agility for a little while. I love this part of the experience. It is often where you see the most joy from both dogs and humans. They run and play and compete and have fun together. You can see the pure joy in them.

This is also the first time I have been shooting a dog show with my Nikon Z6II mirrorless camera body. It is small and lightweight but the grip makes my hand cramp up holding it so long. I also tried using the autofocus set to wide angle animal mode. This is supposed to allow the camera to track the face of an animal and follow it within a certain space in the frame. I am not sure how well that performed. But I certainly miss my fair share of shots on my own and standard autofocus has its own challenges at these events as well. It will be interesting to see as I review images if I think one type of auto focus performs better than the other.

Day two

On day two of the dog show it started off cloudy and foggy. There was not much light. I needed to use the gear that would bet me the images I wanted under those conditions. That meant I was using my Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera body with my Nikon 70-200 f2.8 lens again. Fortunately it cleared up and got brighter out so I could switch to my Nikon D500 camera body paired with my Nikon 200-500mm lens.

Finding Tibetan Mastiffs

I don’t always have a plan for what exactly I am going to photograph at a dog show. But I do often look for dog breeds I have not seen before or that I have not photographed very much. After missing out on an opportunity to photograph the Tibetan Mastiffs on the first day of the dog show I wanted to make sure I did not miss out on them today. The dog show always has handy programs that tell you which dogs will be in which rings at what time each day.

I checked the program and made sure to stay in sight of the ring that the Tibetan Mastiffs would be in. That way I could still photograph other dogs and see when they were ready to exhibit. Luckily Tibetan Mastiffs are large dogs and easy to spot. I could see them gathering near the show ring. It was fun to watch them and observe the variety of colors their fur coats can be.

Prior to this show I had only taken 58 photographs of Tibetan Mastiffs, probably all at one show. During this show I was able to capture 283 images of Tibetan Mastiffs. Then I stayed near that ring to capture images of the other large breed dogs.

That is another nice thing about this dog show. Generally all the dogs from the same AKC group categories will be in the same areas. Sporting, Hound, Working, Terrier, Toy, Non-sporting, and Herding groups. Then if you feel more drawn to certain types of dogs it is easier to watch them. I tend to fall for the Working, Herding, and Sporting dogs.

Pros and cons of new gear

For most of the second day I used my Nikon D500 camera body, which is fairly large and heavy especially since I use a battery grip with it. This set up allows for a much higher shots per second rate so I don’t miss any action. And for the first time I paired it with the Nikon 200-500mm f5.6 lens at a dog show.

In the past I have always switched back and forth between my Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 and my Nikon 300mm f4 with a 1.4 teleconverter. Either lens paired with my Nikon D500 camera body. This combination suited my needs pretty well depending on the conditions I could choose either one. Both set ups also weighed about the same.

Weight

This year the difference between using my Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera body (much small and lighter than the D500) paired with the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 and the other set up of Nikon D500 with Nikon 200-500mm f5.6 lens was significant. The biggest most obvious difference was the weight. The Z6 with 70-200mm lens is relatively light weight. Not so for the D500 and 200-500mm. After using the D500 and and 200-500mm lens combination for half a day my back and shoulders were sore from holding it up. I will need to spend more time using this combination to get used to its heft. Also, hello the strength training I need to be doing to support my running. Just another reason strength training is a good thing. It lets us pursue all our outdoor passions, even photography.

Autofocus

Another difference is in the autofocus capabilities of the Nikon Z6 camera body. There is an autofocus setting that is supposed to be able to track an animals face within a given zone of the frame. I just have to keep the animals head in a specific area. Then the autofocus should track it. I was interested in how this would work out. As I have been writing this I have been editing some of the photographs I took.

This is really just my first time using this feature, but here are my first impressions. This feature seems to have trouble locking on to a dog that does not have a lot of contrast. For example a dog with all white or all black fur. Especially the black because then it is hard to even find the eyes. It is also possible the gloomy low light had an effect on this. The other issue that may be happening is where on the face the camera focuses.

For me, my goal is to focus on the dogs eye most of the time. I want the focus point to be as near to the dogs eye as I can get it. This can be challenging with moving subjects especially dogs running during agility trials. I was hoping that the animal face tracking would help. But, so far I am not sure if it did. There are times when it seems that the auto tracking recognized a part of the dogs face, but not the eye and focused on that. Some images the focus is on the ear or the nose. But it is hard to tell if that is a failure of the auto tracking or an artifact of the subject moving too much. And there was one point when I was photographing the dogs in agility where in real time through my eyepiece I could see the auto tracking move off the dog and track one of the gates. This can happen with traditional autofocus, but this is specifically the kind of focusing error I was hoping to avoid with the animal face auto tracking feature.

And then there is the fact that I obviously miss shots too. I can’t always hold the autofocus on the exact spot I want. I can’t track the dogs perfectly. And sometimes traditional autofocus messes up too. Did the animal auto tracking miss any more shots than I would with my regular set up? It is hard to say at this point.

Nikon 200-500mm

With my old set up my maximum reach was 420mm using my 300mm plus 1.4 teleconverter. The 500mm lens definitely gave me the ability to get a little closer to my subjects. Where this really comes in handy is if there are two different breeds of dogs I want to photograph showing at the same time in nearby rings. Now it is even easier to positions myself between both show rings and alternate between two different groups of dogs and photograph both at the same time instead of missing out entirely on one breed.

The other huge factor with this new lens is that it is a zoom lens. My old lens was a prime lens not a zoom. It was permanently at 300mm, which is 420mm with the teleconverter. This gets you nice and close up on a subject. But then what do you do when the subject walks too close to you. The ability to zoom in and out with this lens just might be a game changer for me photographing dogs as well as other subjects. It allows for a lot more compositional options and for changes in where the subject moves to.

Often I can position myself in a way to maximize the fixed prime lens and I photograph the dogs so they are an element within the frame, but then as they move towards me They fill the frame more and more. I like doing this and have grown accustomed to it. But there is always a time when the dog is too close. And it is possible that I can miss out on what would be a really cute close up because I am too far away waiting for them to walk towards me. The 200-500mm lens gives me the best of both worlds. And the zoom is an extra bonus during agility trials where the dogs are constantly moving farther and closer.

Day 3: not a dog show

There was a lot going on this particular weekend. So since I had captured a lot of images I was really happy with I decided to take this day off from the dog show. And instead My wife and I went to the Naples Grape Festival. We had a lot of fun there and saw a lot of cool art, despite getting rained on almost the entire time.

The third day of the dog show traditionally a Saturday is by far the busiest most crowded day of the show. That can make it challenging for a whole bunch of reasons to get photographs. It is especially challenging in the rain as everyone is crammed under the tents together. It would not have been a great day to be photographing the event. I am glad I went and experienced something new.

Day 4: also not a dog show

Headed out early in the morning to go to the dog show again. It was gloomy but not raining. As I got closer to the dog show location it looked cloudier and cloudier. About 10 minutes away it began to rain. I got to the dog show and it was raining pretty hard. I sat in my car and checked the weather. Rain for the next hour at least. I decided I was happy with the photos I had taken so far and it wasn’t worth standing out in the rain.

I left and drove about 10 miles away where it was actually not raining. I explored a new trail in the Finger Lakes National Forest that I don’t think I had ever been on before. I hiked 2 miles on the Backbone Trail taking some photographs.

Then I went and photographed a little bit along the shores of Catherine Creek. Something I had always been meaning to do but never got around to. The weather was not really great for it so I didn’t persist in that pursuit for long.

Then I got home and uploaded the images and found that since I used a camera body that I don’t use a lot it still had images on it from my trip to Shenandoah National Park earlier in the month. Apparently I forgot that I took some photos with that camera while I was there and never downloaded them. So, I will share one of those here as well.

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