To continue on from my first post, which talks in more detail about the APPA’s, (read it here) this is my second image which was awarded a Silver with Distinction at the 2016 Professional Photography Awards. This was my second time entering this image, as I also first entered it into the Victorian State awards where it was awarded a Silver and scored 81. We often hear that the National judging is much harder than the State (although they are trying to make them more in line together) so the fact that this was awarded much higher and pushed me through to the next level, makes me very happy.
My Entry
Image 1.
As you can see this dog was not originally photographed on the brick background in the final image.
I really liked the dog in this image, but the background is too busy and distracting attention away from him.
However the lighting on him is really lovely and he has a very cute expression so I thought the dog had a lot of potential if in the right setting.
Image 2.
After shooting a lot of different backgrounds all around the city, I knew I wanted something a bit urban.
This brick wall was the one I ended up selecting to use with the dog.
Image 3.
While I loved this background, it needed some work.
I worked on removing the piece of wood across the wall, by taking various different parts of the brick and merging it in.
I thought it might be fun to add a little humour into it and so came the graffiti writing over the no parking sign (this dawg is bad ass).
Image 4.
Here I’ve incorporated the dog in the foreground.
I’ve also brought across the ledge he was sitting on, but straightened this out to match the scene.
Played around with some lighting effects on the background.
With the final image I’ve cropped out the other distracting elements on both the left and right sides of the image again to bring more focus to the dog.
Now I just need to find a way to improve yet again on Silver Distinction next year #chasinggold