hello everybody welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we're going to
go through your july challenge entries and pick a winner
and i'll also discuss why
hey guys welcome back it's great to have you here if you haven't already please
do press the subscribe button and click the bell icon
this is a channel all about dog photography i upload a video every week
usually once a week sometimes more than that if i feel like it
and we talk about all things dogs so today i just want to go through the
shortlist of the july challenge entries and the july challenge was
foreground interest as you guys well know
especially from instagram that i love images with foreground interest in it
adds dimension layers and other nice things so what i
did was i pushed that back out to you guys challenged you all to create images
with good foreground interest and give me your take on it and i was gonna
pick a winner featured in a video and also in a blog
post but actually the quality and quantity of all of the entries far
surpasses anything that i could have imagined and therefore i wanted to sit
and go through them with you so i've got in front of me the obviously
the imac and in the imac i have the images so
in front of you guys right now as well you should be able to see my
short list so this is the shortlist of images
i just screenshotted these basically so it was easier for me to pick through
my final shortlist jesus guys you gave me a right challenge there is
some absolutely brilliant images in here and to be
honest all of the entries were pretty much solid so i just want to
thank you all for taking the time to do that because it was
awesome stay tuned for the august challenge which will come at the end
but i wanted to sit and do this video i don't know whether you guys are going to
find this useful or not but i'm going to go through
basically not on every single one but i want to just
kind of whittle this down to the winner anyway because i've still not decided
because they're all so good of my short list
and basically just say what i am looking for
and the things that probably maybe could be improved
and also the things that people did really really well so i've cropped off
the people that are involved in these and i'm just gonna go through in terms
of foreground interest um i really like this shot here i think
it's brilliant image i'm gonna just switch my view to 100 because i'll see
their instagram images um i just love the use of the leaf to
frame the eye there i think it's brilliant i think the framing is good
um this image could have been improved by the
owner photographer getting down even lower so that there's not so much of the
harness in the background but because of the crop you've not cropped into it
which is good that was the right thing to do
but yeah so i i just think this is awesome i love this image i would have
liked the photographer to have been within the eye
line so you see how the dog's looking sort of like
here ish as a plain of view if the photographer had been there you
would have had this more blurry that more blurry and the dog would have
sort of just popped off of there i think the colours are
beautiful i have no idea where i would even go to
get a photograph like this with this kind of texture here
i would have liked the photographer to be slightly lower down but i understand
that they didn't want to chop the head off
as in they didn't want to have that horizon line chop through the dog's head
um if we're gonna leave it like this i would have preferred a little bit more
space above maybe to here um that would have made it balance a
little bit more so you've got this depth here
to the bottom of the leg essentially um it would have been nice to have that
above again beautiful beautiful log great use
of the foreground interester leading in again i would have loved
catch lights in the eyes so guys if you're
shooting a dog that's quite dark has quite dark eyes and
you're struggling to get catch lights in the eyes if you can
either tilt trying to just tilt or look up a little bit
even if it looks a bit odd at the time it does make a massive difference
and if you can't get them to basically look up enough to get a catch light in
the eyes make one just make one it makes such a difference and it
would have made it a huge difference to a picture like this where i'm wanting to
get some form of a connection there and some form of a contrast within the
darkness so that's just something to look at
this picture oh i love this again another spaniel
the foreground interest is beautiful if anything
i would have really liked space above so remember in composition video
which i will link above the importance of having space to the side that the
dog's looking into in this situation it's kind of the same
so you would want space above because the dog is looking up see
this is super hard it's really hard to get foreground interest from
water level because you are there for in the water or your lenses in the water
so actually to get a shot like this is brilliant I like the mood of it
I like pretty much everything about the shot the only thing that i don't
like is this green up here because it just
draws my eye that way and actually i want to be going this way but
um other than that green this is a amazing shot
and to be honest i'd probably find it quite difficult to get that shot
just saying not usually a massive fan of black and whites if we're being honest
but this particular image i just really like it there's a lot of mood
here i'm wondering you know where is this dog going is this dog
going to the vets is this this dog's final
car journey is the dog being adopted is it going to a new home
there's so many questions about this and the use of the foreground tells the
story it tells me that dog is behind glass and so i'm
wondering why there's a storytelling aspect to it and
i love it also both sharp in the eye brilliant work i
like this shot this is one of my favourite shots because
i just think they look so happy and the foreground interest on the floor
is pretty much bang on the one thing that
is sort of making this slightly less perfect is just the haloing which is
most noticeable around the side of this dog's head um but
apart from that so that's just a little bit of a masking thing to look at
but apart from that i absolutely love this shot
oh i like this image i like this image a lot
the fact that the photographer got those two ears of grass
to the outside of those eyes and didn't have that one come up over the eye is
actually quite a miracle i really like this shot obviously in the
uk we do not crop dogs ears it's illegal to crop a
dog's ears so um i'm just removing the
national ethical discussion out of the situation because this is about
photography super sharp i like it how could it be
better it could be better probably without the harness on
that would probably be the main thing a little bit space above those ears but
other than that i think it's beautiful this is one of my favorite images
because of the dog's expression i just think it's brilliant i kept it in
even though there's not a massive amount of foreground interest
but i kept it in just because of that expression that is a happy
dog back to our full shortlist oh my god guys you're killing me
i'm gonna go whittle this down i think they're all just absolutely
stunning this is so hard i'm gonna have to get someone in to help
dan i've got down to these four right
and i loved them all i loved all of them anyway
so obviously you know what the challenge was foreground interest
yes and i can't pick
you can't pick
no
after far too long of deliberation um we really didn't come to any
form of a conclusion because all four of them pretty damn solid
so in my head all four of them have won but if i was pressed to pick one
god i can't i'd say tie i love the light in this one i'm
gonna have to give it to this one over here
so this image well done to robin for this shot i think it's
beautiful i would just have taken in that side
i think it's beautiful this one i would have just done some little bits of
cleanup to just clear off the space in front
this one i would have liked more space to the left
not to the right hand side and this one up here i would have
just probably tried to mirror some of this shape at this side
um just to give it a little bit more balance bring your eye in instead of
looking up to the top i think they're freaking
amazing and i'm probably never going to do a challenge again
an august challenge is bokeh so the bokeh challenge essentially is to
get as creamy blurry creamy creamy blurry blurry creamy
background as possible using the things that you
know so well if you don't know how to create a blurry background you want to
be watching the exposure triangle video which i will link above
and the exposure triangle video will talk you through the aperture that you
need to be able to do things like that you will also hear what i use personally
um and then after you've watched that definitely go ahead and watch the
portrait video which shows you how to create actual bokeh i.e fluffy light
circles but bokeh in itself is just kind of the
creamy background with low depth of field
so a narrow shallow depth of field i want to be seeing
creamy blur the most important thing is that you still have all of your other
things nailed so things like your composition
your cropping your focus your exposure and just a little bit of
editing flair would be brilliant to have i will do
this all over again next month which i'm absolutely not looking forward to but
kind of am because the picture is awesome
if you haven't already please do press the subscribe button and click the bell
icon please say a massive congratulations to
these guys up here well done massive massive well done and
well done to everybody because you're all amazing so
please do enter august's challenge i might enter one as well
creamy bokeh that's the aim