This one was a bit of a whirlwind! Officially, we have two weeks for each challenge, with two orientation weeks at the beginning of the program to get familiar with the rules, instructions, and discussion board. In practice, this meant I had roughly a month to figure out the first challenge. And while I had two calendar weeks to work on Get Down, my summer trip down south interrupted that schedule- I was looking at about 5 days to shoot & edit, three of which were also school days, and don’t forget to pack!
The prompt for this one was also tricky, in that I could have shot almost anything and met the brief. When everything could work, it gets hard to determine what that special submission should be! My first try was with Willow in one of the nearby forest preserves. The challenge was almost an afterthought for this shoot- my main goal was to test my new lens with some action shots, so that’s what we did!
While I love these photos (she’s so cute!!), I didn’t really feel that they were competition worthy. The background is distractingly bright, the tennis ball seems out of place in the woods, and they just weren’t special. In fact, more than one of the example images for this challenge were this same style of shot! I needed something more creative.
On to the next idea! I decided it was time to get a shot I’ve wanted for a while now- Jay in the water, from the perspective of the middle of the river instead of the shore. I once again loaded up the dogs and pulled my waders out of storage. For this idea, I wanted a much wider angle than my 70-200 could provide. I wanted it to be wide enough to get the sense that you were looking up at him from the water level.
And I’ll be the first to say that this did not go as planned!! I expected to get a little wet, a little muddy, maybe a little sore the next day. What I did NOT expect was that the river bottom was all mud, all the way down. My waders have pretty flimsy soles and would get suction cupped into the bank, making movement to reposition or change angles nearly impossible. Jay is pretty game for anything, especially things involving swimming, but even he thought I was crazy for this one.
Despite the increasingly dire circumstances, we took some fun photos and I didn't flood my camera!! I ended up with a few contenders and went with the wide landscape shot below. I felt like it had the best of all worlds- a clean(er) dog, less mud in the foreground, and I liked the leading line of the bridge behind him. I still didn’t feel like it was my best work, but I felt like it was passable with the time constraints.
View a before/after of this image here!
So I slept on it, and the more time I had to second-guess myself, the more I didn’t like about it. There’s too much distracting grass in the foreground, my subject doesn’t pop against the trees like I hoped, and while it was low, it didn’t have the tiniest sliver of focus plane that has marked winning images in the past. Back to the drawing board!
This time, I reached out to a friend whose dog has modeled for me before. She graciously drove way too far to get eaten alive by ticks for her troubles, but we ended up with images I was much happier with! I was able to get lower with someone else posing the dog, and the boardwalk made for a less distracting backdrop than the riverbank.
It was a tricky choice and I went back and forth a few more times, but I just loved this shot of Marni looking off into the distance. It’s a beautiful profile, her colors work so well with the backdrop, and it has that ultra-thin plane of focus that I was aiming for! I also just love her expression and the way the wind blows her hair back- she looks like she’s just waiting for a cue to get up and play!
View a before/after of this image here!
I submitted the image, drove to Texas, and tried to put it out of my mind until I got back. Unfortunately, the judges didn’t like this pose as much as I did! They felt that her open mouth drew too much attention away from here eye, and that the close crop exacerbated the issue. The things I was worries about- her collar removal and potential fringing in the trees, which I have a hard time seeing- weren’t mentioned at all!
While I’d loved to have scored back in the top 20, I’m much more excited about the next challenge and can’t wait to share the images I’ve already considered for it. All part of the learning experience!