The Dog Park (Janesville WI)

I cannot believe it has been almost 6 months since I last posted.  That's what traveling for work does to a person.  Life and time seems to just disappear.  But, the future is bright and things are changing.  Definitely for the colder anyway!  There has definitely been some picture taking over the past 6 months just not nearly as much as I would have liked.  There is also a new camera and a new lens which I am very excited about.  My new Canon 7D is just fantastic.  I finally pulled the trigger on it just before I took a trip to Mexico City.  The new Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM telephoto lens is sitting right next to the 7D in all its glory.  I also took the lense to Mexico City and am really enjoying it.  The number of hits I am getting from the two together is quite incredible.  Although very heavy the image stabilization enables me to take wonderful pictures in much lower light.  A beauty to use.

Anway, enough about that, let's look at some photos.  The latest shots I have are from a walk in the woods with my father-in-law.  He always takes his dog Maggie to the dog park and I decided to tag along with our beast Vaughn, and my camera.  The first picture is of a big guy that lost an eye in a fight.  He was more interested in rummaging around smelling than in anything else.  He looks quite mean but was as lovely as could be.

The next one is an absolute darling.  Very photogenic.  I almost couldn't go wrong with this guy.  Very rambunctious though so he was all over the place and difficult to get a clean crisp shot.  I took about 50 shots of him and I think this is the only one where he was looking even remotely at the camera.

I feel like the colors on this guy were great and his bandana made for some great imagery.  He had a sparkle in his eye the whole time and was always showing a great face for a picture.  The next guy makes me a bit perplexed.  I am having trouble getting the eyes to pop.  I usually find that the dog looking directly at the camera makes for excellent pictures.  But, the following shot I think gives an example of a guy who although he is looking directly at the camera has trouble showing his eyes. 

They are simply little lumps of black in the image.  It is obviously even worse where the dogs are black.  Does anybody know how to compensate for that?  Or at least know how best to position the dog so that their eyes can be better seen.  An help on this would be greatly appreciated.