Embark Challenge: Colouriffic

Embark Challenge | Colouriffic | Lebanon, Oregon Pet Photographer

At the beginning of May, I took on a six-month photography challenge called Embark, through Unleashed Education. This photography adventure consists of 12 different challenges that focus on improving techniques in your pet photography and creating more variety in my work; featuring a mixture of posed and action shots.

Theme #1 Colouriffic. The brief for this theme was simple, find a bold colored backdrop, whether man-made or natural and pose your subject in front of it. I scouted some murals and doors in Corvallis, Oregon that fit the bold colored background script.

My dog helper Ciri, and her human, met up on an weekday evening and walked the downtown streets and alleyways, stopping at some colored areas, capturing a variety of poses and photos. Ciri was a champ! Such a great dog for this challenge. Of course, she probably loved all the snacks she got during the walkabout. And apparently, my ability to bark like a dog and other ear-perking sounds, was impressive to Ciri’s mom. (Haha.) “Anything to get the ears to perk up”, I say!

After the session, I picked out the one that best suits the brief, looks the best overall, edited it, and submitted for critique. The two photographers that organize this challenge, critique all photos submitted (there were 80 submitted images) and give us video feedback. If you are lucky to be picked for top 10 or 20, you receive bragging rights.

Although I didn’t reach the top 10/20, I did receive valuable feedback. They liked the look of the dog’s expression, composition, and the colored background met the brief. The critiques received were editing – change the tone of the yellow/green areas to orange-ish to match the eye, change the color/tone of the collar for same reason, and brighten it up to give it more vibrance.

For my first ever photo to be critique by two international award-winning pet photographers, I was pretty happy with this feedback!

Thanks to Ciri and her mom Angelina for their awesomeness in helping me out. If you want to find out more about how your dog can be a helper, email me ginger@outwestoriginals.com

Here are a few from our session with the last one being the one I submitted.