Welcome to Shutter Notes, our weekly community feature. Shutter Notes gives you the chance to get to know our community members a bit better. Each member will share a little bit about themselves and their chosen image.

Sarah is a stay-at-home mom with two kids. Her interest in photography ignited in 2006 on a trip to Alaska. Then it really started to catch fire with the birth of her first child in 2007.

prairie dog by Sarah Johnson
Nikon D750, Tamron 70-200 f2.8 G2 lens
122mm, ISO 100, 1/400, f7.1

Why and how Sarah created this image

Sarah captured this moment in a prairie dog park in South Dakota. This was an elder prairie dog who was keeping watch over the younger ones. She thought that the fat little prairie dog sitting there was really cute. She had so much fun photographing these little guys during a recent vacation. They really are the best models!

For post-processing, Sarah used a black and white preset she has from Pretty Presets, called Dove. She then did some cropping and local adjustments to exposure and some sharpening.

“I really like black and white photography. I think it can change a blah image into something that looks really nice. It can change a snapshot into, what I consider, a photograph.”

Please join us in the Photofocus Community and find the complete description and instructions on how to submit your image for consideration here.

Please only submit one image at a time and for now only one submission per person. We’ll ask for more at a later date if we need them. If you have any questions, comment here or send me a message within the community. We look forward to your submissions.

If you have any photographer friends you know would enjoy or benefit from being in the Photofocus Community, be sure to invite them!