Running Rain

Today I took this picture:

I believe this was about 1/2000 of a second at f2.0 or 2.2.  As you can tell, the sun is behind me and to the right.  I find that many times for Rain it works pretty well to have the sun shining at an angle on her, especially for shots like these.  It normally doesn't work for people, but people don't normally have dark coats of fur.  The light is able to bring out the definition and contrast of her black coat.  If she were between me and the sun, I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the luminosity of her coat.  RAW file imported into Photoshop.  Black and white applied in post. Contrast and fill light adjusted in post.

 I started off by having Rain sit.  I walked about 15-20 paces away from her and placed her tennis ball on the ground.  Then I went back to where Rain was, walked about 10-15 paces away from her at a 90° angle and focused the camera on her.  Then I walked about 5-10 paces toward the ball but stayed parallel to the path between Rain and the ball so that the camera would be focused on Rain's path of travel.  I got low to the ground because I wanted the viewpoint to be on the same level she was.  I said "go" and fired away.  Here is a diagram:

I repeated this about 8-9 times before my camera stopped working on me.  I decided on the picture above because it had the most sense of action.  I like how Rain's tail is touching the tip of the frame and how her legs are bunched up ready to explode.  The one major improvement I would like to make is the focus plane.  I think I missed it by half a foot or so.  I either needed to be more exact in where I positioned myself, or I could have closed down the aperture to make the focus plane a little wider and give me more room for error.  The hardest part was trying to nail the focus.  And getting Rain to stay while I prepped for each shot.

Here are some of the "missed" shots: