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

ORIGINAL EDIT

SECOND EDIT + RESUBMISSION

Challenge #2: Spaced Out

In short, the Spaced Out challenge was all about using negative space that enhances the story, mood, or visual appeal of the image. Overall, the area of negative space should be appealing to the eye, but not distract from or over power the main subject.

From previous location scouting, I knew that I wanted to use this long, textured wall at the Art Museum. To make the concept work as I had envisioned it in my mind, I needed a gray dog. Or a dog with gray coloring mixed with other muted colors to enhance the monochromatic mood.

Enter Merle Border Collie, Kismet. At nine months old, he was a more than willing subject as long as kisses, treats, and sticks were involved.

As we worked through the session, I shot this idea a few different ways, but due to it being 7 AM on Monday, my brain wasn’t computing what I was imagining for this shot.

However, once we got him into this position, he started naturally turning behind him to check things out (without moving his body, only his head), and it occurred to me to allow him to continue to do that a few more times, so I could get a nice body position and expression.

Just as we were able to make it happen, it started raining oh-so lightly, which I felt really added to the overall feel of the image. Thank you, Mother Nature!

With my edit, I cooled all the tones down and worked to make it feel like a rainy, overcast day in some distance cityscape.

What do you think? Did we nail the concept?

Craig and Charlotte both really loved the feel of the image especially the idea of it being a color image even with all of the subdued, monochromatic tones. Their only feedback was that there was too much negative space and due to that it felt a little unbalanced.

Charlotte literally said, crop and resubmit. With the 16 x 10 crop instead, the tail helps to balance the right side of the image and is much more appealing overall.

So, that’s good news - even though my image didn’t make it into the top ten, I’m still super pleased with it!

ORIGINAL IMAGE

ORIGINAL EDIT

SECOND EDIT + RESUBMISSION

Challenge #3: Highs + Lows

What’s interesting about this concept is I don’t think I’ve ever really shot this way! The idea is to photograph your subject outdoors, inside, or in studio in either a high key or low key type lighting scenario.

I’m actually a bit embarrassed to admit this, but between the weather here in North Carolina along with my client work, it left me almost no time to photograph this challenge.

Enter Gumbo, my backyard, and the Thursday afternoon before the challenge deadline.

We photographed this on one of the hottest afternoons of the year and it took every trick in the book I had to get Gumbo to close his mouth for a more serious low key image. Grabbing a stick and waving it around did the trick!

While this was not the vision I had for the challenge, my goal for Emerge was to complete all of the challenges on time. I will likely be reshooting this with another idea I had in mind, but in the meantime, enjoy my Bubba’s beautiful portrait.

Feedback and resubmission image coming soon!

ORIGINAL IMAGE