Rock Climbing Puppyby
bex85Comment by LucidLotus: You already got some good comments on this image, but being as it was your first entry and I liked the subject I wanted to add my thoughts as well.
First and foremost, you have a doll of a subject here, so adorable, hard to go wrong with that!
Now let's get into the technicals. Upon first view the image looks like it falls more into a 'snapshot' range than anything else. This, however, is not a bad thing in my opinion. Obviously there was a reason you took the picture - something you wanted to capture and spoke to you - that to me is one of the most important aspects of photography, so regardless of how the photo turns out in the end, the intent is there and that elevates many things beyond just 'snapshot'.
The composition of this image is pretty good but I think there are some areas where it could be improved, even just in post-processing, though if you can and wanted to do a reshoot to give it another try that'd work too.
First is the positioning of your main subject - the pup is smackdab in the middle of the photo. This kind of setup is fine in general but can also put the breaks on a creative or artistic flow. This also probably is one of the reasons a previous commenter asked what the subject was, the rocks or the dog since they both seem to be getting equal time. I would suggest cropping the bottom of the image to help bring the pup down lower in the shot and thus give him(?) more of a starring role in the image. In scrolling the image on my screen I think cropping off about where the two lower rocks meet up would do the trick. This effectively lowers the dog, creating a sort of 'ground' line while both still giving the rocks the ability to create the atmosphere you were going for and it also opens up the top portion of the image too, makes it feel stretched and higher and more purposeful to me.
The lighting here is pretty harsh, which is typical of the sun, its rarely in the mood to be helpful when I'm out in the middle of the day as well. The downsides of the bright harsh light is the dog's fur, being white, ends up getting blown out in areas and so the lovely textures it provides are then lost. I still haven't learned how to rescue blown out areas so I'm not sure how you could tone the overly white areas down without causing problems elsewhere, no point it making an adjustment if it'll just knock something else out of whack! The lighting also has created some dramatic and some not so great shadows. The whole side of the dog facing the viewer is in shadow, which helps pull out those textures I'd mentioned before but it also makes him seem a little muddled. A nice overcast day or morning/late evening would probably be best for lighting - or if you'd been able to get him entirely in the shade then the lighting would be even and the contrasts not so intense.
I think the flowers along the side and in the background add a needed delicacy that contrasts well with the roughness of the rocks. Its also, as someone pointed out, corresponds nicely with the dog's fur color and helps bring that color to other parts of the image thus adding more balance.
They say that B&W can hide a number of sins, though it shouldn't be used only to rescue a photo, that there should be a purpose beyond that for using B&W. That said I'd be interested to see how this translates into B&W since it does have such an intense light and shadow issue. What may be a downside to the image now could be a boon in that situation and potentially easier to control with only the two colors to worry about. Maybe a high contrast sort of photo.. might work, might not but you never know 'til you experiment!
The final sort of wishlist thing I have is I'd love to have seen the dog's entire face. So much personality can be inferred from an animal's face and I think an even better connection could be made with the viewer if they were looking into the little guy's eyes.
Perhaps as a finishing off point I could suggest a nice medium sized border as that always seems to add just a hint of rigidity to an image which then makes it seem just that smidge more polished.
Pet shots tend to be the kiss of death in many of the challenges, so that's a quirk about the site you go up against when submitting them, but I think you've quite a character here and I certainly wouldn't mind seeing glimpses into the life of your rock climbing dog in the future challenges.
Photographer found comment helpful.
