Happy Dogs
Jan, 2020Views
118
Likes
Awards
2020 Choice Award
Peer Award
Superb Composition
Emotions
Impressed
Top Ranks
Top 20 rankTop 10 rank week 1
Top 30 rankTop 30 rank week 1
Top 30 rankCategories
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Discover more photos See all
Behind The Lens
Location
The image Happy is a composite I created from two separate photographs.The brown dog was applied to the image of the silver dog. Both images were taken at my home.Time
I honestly don’t remember the time of day for either as they were both taken a great deal of time apart (at least a 1 year period between the two images).Lighting
The lighting from the first image of the silver dog (Weimaraner) on the left of the image was captured utilizing natural lighting. I used a speedlight mounted to the camera in the image of the brown dog (German shorthaired pointer) on the right.Equipment
Silver dog image: Nikon D750, not sure about lens used for this one to be honest; think maybe my trusty Nikkor 50mm F/1.8G Brown dog image: Nikon D750, Tamron 24-70, Photoolex M800N SpeedlightInspiration
I love creating “Art” through photography and post-processing. I originally created the image you see without the brown dog. When I was doing a practice lighting session one day with my brown dog I captured the image of him almost “smiling” and it instantly reminded me of the image I created a while back with the silver dog. Given they had similar expressions I decided to merge the brown dog into the scene with the silver dog and Voila! Happy Dogs was created.Editing
All my images start in Lightroom where they receive basic lighting and color adjustments before moving to PSE (Photoshop Elements). In the image with the silver dog we had just finished playing fetch and when I took his pic he was so relaxed that his eyes photographed funky. I wasn’t having any luck fixing them in PSE so I took a totally different direction and used the liquify tool to sew his eyes shut. I also included a rainbow and sky overlay. I also used PSE to make a copy of the brown dog, apply it to the original image, and blend him into the photograph.In my camera bag
Nikon D750, backup battery, 2 SD cards, Photoolex M800N Speedlight, extra batteries for flash, Tamron 2.8 24-70, Nikkor 85mm F/1.8G, Nikkor 50mm F/1.8GFeedback
My advice to others is to embrace the “imperfections” of images and don’t be afraid to push boundaries and allow your creativity to flow.
