And here we are again! The past two weeks have gone by faster than I could’ve imagined. A fortnight felt like plenty of time to take a single image when I signed up for this course!! But between driving Texas and back, delivering over 600 images to my Texas clients (with more to still edit), and shooting a 4-day dock trial, I was down to the wire on this challenge. I had two locations in mind, two models lined up, and two days without rain in the forecast. Time to make some magic!
I’ll admit, my first thought was to submit one of the thousands of images I had already shot. I do a lot of centered compositions on my own- surely there’s something I can use! And sure, I have lots of centered dogs.
Maybe a service dog?
Or how about a show dog?
A dock dog, just for fun?
But… I’m competitive, and none of these images are so centered and symmetrical that they could win. I looked at top 10s from past years, and they all have carefully chosen locations where the symmetry perfectly complements the dog’s pose. I’ve talked a lot with photographer friends recently about the difference between client images and competition images. While there’s some overlap, they’re fairly distinct- those audiences care about very different things! If I wanted to continue pushing myself, I needed to shoot specifically for the course.
So despite being pretty tired of my camera at this point, I grabbed a fresh SD card and a charged battery and headed out. I had seen this location posted in a local Facebook group and knew it would be a great backdrop for this challenge! I was really interested in trying out different poses for this one- the easy default for a centered photo is to have the dog sitting square, staring down the camera. But where’s the fun in that?
Just to cover my bases, we tried the square sit first. It’s cute! I like a lot of things about it- the expression is good, the color harmony is great, and I’d be happy to deliver this to a client. But DePigleo’s slight head tilt and windswept ear fringe puts him off-center of the circle enough that I wasn’t thrilled about it. I also didn't love the uneven flowers behind him! We tried moving our model onto the ground to experiment with other poses.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE this photo. I think the way he’s sitting balances out well enough that it works for a centered photo, even though he’s not sitting square, and that one paw up is just the cutest! But of course, the circle is slightly off to one side. I also think it’s too far above his head to effectively work as a frame like I was envisioning- in a perfect world, I’d move the dog further forward to make him bigger in the frame and use the backdrop more effectively. However, we had already burned through a lot of his patience for my posing nonsense and we were quickly losing daylight. Time to try with the second model!
We paused quickly on the playground to take advantage of this crazy ropes course- another one that I’d be happy to give to a client, but just isn’t right for this challenge. The soft light has lost too much detail in her body fur, and that pink tongue is far too bright and distracting from her eyes. A mouth & tongue tripped me up last time, and I won’t make the same mistake twice!
So we made it back to the circle, posed up my much more cooperative model into the 45/45 pose I was hoping for, and… we'd lost the sun. The night ended up being more overcast than expected, and the flat sky meant too much detail lost. The noise level is pretty unacceptable for a submission, no matter how much reduction and refining I tried. Here’s a 200% view of this image compared to my first challenge- the difference in image quality is definitely noticeable.
Back to the drawing board once again! I had a backup location and backup model lined up for Thursday evening, squeezed in before our agility class. This time, we were facing the opposite lighting problem- we needed to shoot around 5, which was much more daylight than the golden hour I prefer. I spent two days wishing for some cloud cover.
This time around, luck was on our side. We ended up with the perfect soft, even lighting from an overcast sky- and managed to finish up just before it rained! My models did a great job posing and ignoring the shoppers from the church’s rummage sale, and I ended up with a tough choice to make: play it safe and submit the posed portrait, or take a chance on the action shot?
View a before/after of this image here
I couldn’t help it- Five’s sweet face as he checked out the camera was just too adorable to pass up! I changed his tail from the original image to give the composition a more balanced weight and crossed my fingers that the judges would find the merit in my slightly off-book approach, then it was time to await the feedback. The nice thing about getting down to the wire is that wait was much shorter for this round!
Unfortunately, my risk-taking didn’t pay off this time. While the judges agreed that it’s a great portrait with an engaging expression, and my centering was dead on the face, they felt that his front leg pushed the composition too far and felt too weighted. They did notice the tail, but felt that since it was so much smaller than the paw, it didn’t work as an effective counterweight.
Another point of critique was the slanted columns and suggestions for correcting them. I very rarely shoot at such a wide angle, so this isn’t something that I ever look for or notice! It's always good to add another tool to my toolbox and another thing to look out for. Now to get working on the next! And I can’t forget to pick out my IPPA entries- maybe I’ll write another blog about those!!