Aug 17, 2008—Is your club planning a new indoor dog sports facility, or are you thinking of updating an older facility? If you said yes to either question, Virgil and I have some ideas that can help set the stage for the best possible photography—and a lot of other benefits—for your venue.

Why should you be concerned about setting up for good photography? The answer is threefold:

First, if your facility offers great conditions for photography, you can use that as a marketing point to attract the best photographers, as well as the most discerning competitors. Having excellent photography means that your facility and club are that much more likely to get coverage in magazines, such as Clean Run and Dog Sport Magazine.

Second, and maybe even more important, designing for good photography also means that your facility will be more comfortable for all participants and more attractive overall. In fact, it may even be healthier and safer.

Third, depending on the suggestions you choose to implement, you might end up saving money for your club or facility over the long term.

Here are the topics to think about:

1. Walls

Myth: White walls are best because they’re the brightest and reflect the most light into the ring.

Reality: The typical agility ring has white walls with black rubber flooring or a dirt floor, which is essentially white and black and not very flattering. In an area as large as an agility ring, the walls contribute almost no light. And if you’re relying on reflected wall light to make the area bright enough, then you definitely need more lighting. Lighting will be discussed in a future article of this series.

Because you may have no choice about floor color, the easier change is the walls. Light dogs disappear against white walls, and dark dogs look silhouetted.

Suggestions: A much better wall choice is a complex middle-value color, like Sherwin Williams Relaxed Khaki (green), Behr Monaco (blue), Benjamin Moore Semolina (yellow), or Benjamin Moore Muslin (beige). These particular choices are complex—meaning not pure—colors that are much more flattering for people’s skin tones, and virtually any dog color will stand out against them.

By the way, if you want help choosing colors, Virgil and I would be glad to provide consultation support.

Cost: If you’re already planning to paint, the cost of choosing a good complex, midrange color is little or nothing.

2. Windows

Myth: Natural light will augment limited electric light and help with photography.

Reality: The truth is that natural light changes all day long. At some time of the day, sunlight comes streaming in. At other times, the window light is softer. Those conditions create light and dark spots in the ring, often at the same time, which play havoc with exposure. These conditions can also be disorienting or even blinding to competitors and dogs who run from light to dark areas.

In a dirt ring, window light adds another complication: haze. As the competition raises dust, the dust hangs in the air, especially close to the ground where the dogs are, and it acts like fog when sunlight hits it.

Suggestions: It’s great to have windows in your facility, and in fact, fire codes might require them. Just cover them with a soft white fabric or even paper or glass-frosting that will diffuse the light and make it much more consistent throughout the ring. The same is true for skylights.

Cost: The cost of covering windows can be relatively small for fabric and even less for paper or laminate frosting.

Look at the example photos below. These are largely unedited images.

The first one shows the nearly disastrous effect of both window light and white walls behind the dog. Only with a professional action camera is it possible to get a fairly usable shot under those circumstances, and even that is dicey.

The other examples demonstrate how effective color can be on the walls. Granted, neither of these colors is the complex midtone that Virgil and I would recommend. They are strong colors that are too “pure”—that is, the yellow is nearly primary yellow, and the blue is nearly primary blue. (We mean “primary” in the sense that most of us use from our art class days. Photographic primaries are actually different.)

Better choices would be complex midtones—middle-range colors that contain a mixture of hues. In other words, a good yellow would contain some blue and red. It wouldn’t be pure yellow. It would also be a less intense, less neon-looking color than these examples.

The colors we recommend wouldn’t make the facility seem dark. Nor would they seem to belong in a scene that could be captioned “walk into the light.”

But even though the background colors in the examples aren’t ideal, they are better than white. In every case, the person and dog seem to pop off the wall.

This concludes the first article in the series. For the second article in the series, click here. From that article, you can link to the third (final) article in the series.

If you have any questions about cameras, software, or photography, Virgil would be glad to hear from you. You can email him, you can call (513) 779-8934, or you can stop by at an event and ask questions.