2022 Weekly Photo Challenge
Week 15: Pets
Last week I asked you to look out to the distance & work on creating images with straight, evenly aligned horizon lines. This week we’re going to focus a little closer to home and turn your attention to pets.
Working with animals can complicate everything about your photography. Animals usually aren’t very good at understanding your artistic vision and cooperating to get just the right pose. They’re typically more interested in the treats you hold in front of them in a desperate attempt to get them somewhat close to the image you’ve envisioned in your mind. And may God help you if you’re working with a cat and try gesturing “over there” with a laser pointer!
So with this challenge, you could try to capture a regular day-in-the-life portrait of one of your pets, such as this image of Blaise just relaxing on the sofa one evening.
(Most of the time, Blaise is pretty chill.)
Or you could try to catch your pet doing something unique, such as in this photo of Tim the Cat. I’m still not sure whether he was trying to stare down the intruder…or if he was giving himself a morning pep talk.
Instead of creating an image around the house, you could try your hand at staging a photo including one of your pets “on-location.”
However you approach this week’s challenge, don’t forget about your basic photography principles. Try to ensure your photo is in focus, well exposed, and composed well. That last one can be tricky when working with animals, (you’ll notice I don’t have any serenely posed photos of our husky, Libby!), but even slower-moving animals like Blaise and Tim can move out of your shot at just the wrong time.
This seemingly simple silhouette of Tim sitting in the window took 12 exposures to get him posed & positioned the way I wanted.
Do your best to create the image you want in-camera, but remember that post-processing with Photoshop, Gimp, or another photo editing app is always an option!
Eric Culver Photography 