One of my favourite styles of photos to capture of dogs and often it’s quite easy to set up, is to have them in a sit or drop and then encourage them to look up at their owner standing nearby (usually holding a lead 😉 )
When edited, this pose alone creates a dreamy feeling, but add a butterfly and bam, you may just have yourself an award-winning photo composition. teehee
How I captured Upon a Butterfly Wish
Poppy was only six months old at the time this photo was captured. She had just been running through the water in the Caboolture River before I found this rocky location to capture two individual photos of both Poppy and her older ‘sister’ Lilly to create a composite of them together.
There was no chance Poppy was going to be able to sit still next to her ‘sister’ on the rock. Haha
Whilst I was snapping away, I had Kerry capture Poppy’s attention for a moment and managed to capture this lovely pose of Poppy looking up sideways.
The Post Processing method
I spend a lot of time editing the photos I capture of my clients’ pets and family but among the collection, there are always a few extra special photos that I believe have a chance of being awarded in a photographic competition.
When inspiration hits, I’ll spend additional hours on one of these photos, refining the details, looking for distractions and even compositing special elements like a butterfly.
For example, take a moment to look at the before photo captured of Poppy & a photo of the butterfly I captured at the Bribie Island Butterfly House
I combined both photos together to create my vision for this photo. Many hours goes into refining a photo like this; cleaning up distractions, accentuating features and directing light through dodging and burning to create a magical piece of artwork.
Have fun sliding between the before and after
Can you see all the little distractions I removed, the detail added through contouring the rocks, shaping the light on Poppy and carefully guiding your focus towards the brightest area of the image being Poppy’s Face looking at the butterfly?
Photographic Awards Received
I have been very fortunate to have been highly awarded in the Photography Competition arena for this image.
9th Queensland International Digital Circuit 2022
The Queensland International Circuit comprises of four circuits, meaning there are four sets of different judges and essentially four chances to impress judges with your submitted photos.
It is always amazing to see how differently your photos perform among different judges. Each judge brings their own personal experience, prejudices, and wisdom to the table and one photo may achieve outstanding results from one judge and not do so well with another.
So it was to my surprise that my first time entering the QIDC I received one of the highest awards from the Mount Gravatt Salon out of over 1000 photos submitted worldwide, plus it did also receive an acceptance in each of the other three salons.
Mount Gravatt Salon
PSA GOLD AWARD – (Photographic Society of America Gold Award)
View Results Gallery
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The Queensland Camera Group is an amazing photographic club that has many activities for its members as well as a monthly photographic competition. Each month they invite an accredited Photography Judge to analyse, judge and score the photos submitted by members and many offer advice and feedback to help improve our abilities as a photographer.
In July 2022 this photo received an Honour in the OPEN category from Sue GORDON AAPS AFIAP PSQA
View Gallery
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