Saturday, August 27, 2011

Earth Tones

Sleepy Time


Dog Blog Post #428: The Daily Shoot was kind again, with...

Make a photograph composed of earth tones today. Use contrast and composition to provide visual excitement.

... and since the boys are already Earth Tones, this was pretty much a gimme, with the slight wrinkle that they spent the day at the "day spa", and there was no way I was going to go outside and pose the them in the dirt.

Period.

So up onto the earth toned couch they went...

Sleepy Time


I picked the picture up top for the Daily Shoot, and the second for Our Daily Challenge, which had the theme of "Set".

As in, "a fairly matched set of Sleepy Golden Retrievers."

The observant amongst you will note I had previously stated "up onto the the earth toned couch they went" and surmise that these pictures were staged.

And they were.

It's amazing what you can get with thoughtful placement of your treat container. In this case, it was sitting on the floor about a foot away from the sofa. It's a rather amusing to see Henry's head and paw creep lower and lower as the shots progressed!

It wasn't until much later, after pictures uploaded and tweeted, that I paused to ponder the irony of "visual excitement" being represented by an apparently sleeping dog.

Oh well, you know what they say, "let sleeping dogs lie." :)

Here's a few spare Scavenge Challenge shots for:

25) Education Center: In the days before digital cameras and photo processing software, photographers often used fabrics, grids and oils on glass as creative filters to achieve soft or sparkly effects. This month, try one of these ideas! Refer to the examples in the Education Center.

Crape Myrtle


Crape Myrtle


Rose


All three used a piece of Saran Wrap (plastic wrap) held over the lens. While I'm not wild about blurry pictures, I think the linearized bokeh in the top picture is rather cool. If you click on the shots (to bring up flickr) and then click on the picture there you'll see it on a black background in lightbox, where the effect is much more apparent.

Editor's Note: To put Kolchak Puggle's mind at ease, the bottle of cognac in yesterday's Terrible Top Hat post was merely a prop. No goldens got hammered.:)

And, Wendy, I think you're right. They DO need bow ties. White collars (the sort you find on a shirt) would also be nice.

Perhaps something like I saw at Modern Tails after a google search (Nope, never done any business with them. They just happened to have a clearly photographed product.)


What do you think? Would the boys looking smashing?

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7 comments:

houndstooth said...

I love both of the earth toned pictures! I love the different textures you caught with them.

If you are remotely crafty, you can make some really cute props for them that I'm betting you'd like. If your husband or son has an old dress shirt (or any shirt with a collar) you cut off the collar and just save the top button. You can add a tie (even a boy's clip on would work) or a bow tie to it and have a really neat look for them. I always meant to make one for our Hawk, but I never got around to it.

K-Koira said...

Oooh, a book I have out from the library right now has sewing designs for little white collars for the dogs. Its called Dogwear, if you are interested and inclined toward sewing at all. They have a lot of great patterns that I am going through right now.

Sage said...

Staged or not, they are so darn cute! I'd love to see Henry trying to get the treats. I bet that was something else.

How Sam Sees It said...

I was going to ask what they were looking at!

Sam

Pup Fan said...

Great earth tones photos!

Kristin G. said...

The photo of Zachary and Henry side-by-side is just adorable. Love the rose too!

Greyhounds CAN Sit said...

Lovely earth tones there:) The boys look totally natural like they're enjoying their nap!