This week I signed up for a new photography course. I do these frequently when I want to improve my technique or expand my creative process. This new course is intended to focus on the latter… creativity.
This course focuses on pet photography, and challenges us every two weeks to visualize, compose, and edit a photo within the constraints of a theme. The first one is titled “colouriffic” (the course creators are from ”down under,” hence the spelling), and challenges us to find a colorful (or rather a colourful) background and photo a pet in front of it.
The real trick, though, is to take a photo that doesn’t look like a snapshot, but rather a quality image that conveys something (warmth, emotion, laughter, etc.). So knowing that our dog Luna has training as a hunting retriever, I decided to tell that as a story. The color orange is a common color in the hunting world, so I knew I wanted to use that as the dominant color. So, concept done, now I need a background.
As luck would have it, I found a wall nearby that was fairly orange. The texture was too busy, so I knew I needed to separate Luna far enough away to blur out the wall stucco. Put Luna’s orange collar on , had her hold an orange bumper, snap a few dozen images at different angles, and made a lot of funny noises to get the head tilt, and success!
I present to you, Luna - a study in orange!
Next challenge is “composition,” so I have some planning to do. Until then, be safe and enjoy life!
UPDATE: This image placed in the Top 10 of the challenge!
