When client work takes priority, it doesn’t necessarily leave a lot of room for personal projects.

However, I’m a firm believer that it’s important to be a lifelong learner and always working to improve your craft and experience for your client.

Over the course of the next six months, I’ll be participating in a series of Pet Photography challenges called, Emerge from Unleashed Education, with other Pet Photographers from around the world. Each challenge has a specific prompt, instructional video, and requirements to meet.

With every new challenge, doled out bi-weekly, each photographer is required to submit a single image with their interpretation of that specific challenge.

What’s really cool about Emerge is that not only does it help you build your portfolio and encourage you to photograph in ways you may not have before, but Emerge also:

Provides feedback on each image you submit
Curates a Top Ten list from each challenge to be featured on their blog and social media
Concludes with a Top Three accolades for the top three best portfolios out of dozens of Pet Photographers around the world
Gives accolades and awards for things like Most Improved
And more…

Every two weeks, I’ll be sharing the newest image I’ve submitted, what the challenge was, and share with you the feedback I was given on that image.

I hope that by going along with me on this series of challenges, you learn a lot, too, and enjoy all of the various interpretations of each challenge through my lens!

Want to learn more about a Pet Portrait Experience for you pup? Click here to learn more about our experience, commonly asked questions, pricing, and so much more!

Challenge #1: Framed

The first challenge requires you to frame your subject in some way, whether with natural or man made elements, while still allowing your subject to be the star of the show. This could mean they are framed in the foreground, middle ground, or background.

After location scouting, I selected this unique art piece that exists at Downtown Cary Park. I knew given the colors of the location, I needed a dog who had similar, neutral coloring. It was also essential to have a dog that had a good sit or stand stay as this image requires proper alignment and positioning or it will be off kilter.

I especially liked this spot, because Koda here is framed doubly — both in the art piece, but also with the walkway that aligns this spot.

As you can see from the original to the edit, I edited the image to match the cooler toned, dewy morning that we found ourselves in until the sun came up along with removing unbalanced foliage.

The image below is the original image, then the original edit and submission, follow by the updated edit I’m going to resubmit for my final portfolio.

My image made it to the top eleven, but Craig and Charlotte preferred a tighter crop with less negative space at the top bumping it out of the top ten. They also wanted me to darken the neck area a bit where you could see the collar was removed. All valid and helpful points.

All in all, for the first challenge, I am super pleased with my execution especially given that I was in a super tight time crunch to make it happen between the weather and client work. A huge shoutout to Ash and Koda for being willing to get up at dawn to meet me at Downtown Cary Park before the sun came up.

Thankfully, this is one challenge I don’t have to reshoot and just made a couple of tweaks to the original edit to resubmit for my final portfolio.

ORIGINAL IMAGE