A Toy Poodle (or walking topiary, as Jutilda says) following the shiny shoes of his handler.
I'm just so tickled that I could get a shot like this with only the spotlighting in the arena as lighting. The shoes may not be prominent enough for some voters but I just love the similarity in the gaits of handler and dog and the shadows.
PP - tonemapped the shoes and dog in qtpfsgui (pregamma 0.697, mantiuk method, contrast mapping 0.1, saturation factor 1.087, detail factor 1), merged with main image at 90% transparency, cropped, white balance, increased contrast, dodged/burnt a bit, gradient on top, resized, sharpened, added border.
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I thought this delightful and completely in the spirit of the challenge! Light is perfect, stride is perfect, and footwear is lovely on both subjects. Glad you and Judy had a great time, too.
I still think this is stunning, vastly underrated and underappreciated. That whole "Spring in his step" and the poodle airborne just convey such a sense of style and flair. BTWE, how did the dog do in the show?
I don't mean to say anything bad about your entry but here is what I see when I look at this entry.
The lighting is off on the man, you can barely see his legs and his left hand looks like it's coming out of the white border. Not to mention the right hand which looks odd over there all by itself. Don't get me wrong the dog is cute and all with the hair cut but at the same time I think you focused more on the dog then the mans shoes.
In my eyes this shot looks like something that was just snapped at a dog show without any thought. I think when you got home you looked at your photos and saw the shoes and thought "hey why not".
Granted I don't know the story behind this shot and I don't know what your intentions actually were but isn't the point of a photograph to tell a story and the story in this photo tells me more about the dog with a hint of the guy walking the dog, nothing about the shoes he is wearing.
Good luck during the challenge I'm very interested to see where this places.
Nice photo; but for me the the way the mans lefs blend into the background is a real distration. Probably your intention though to put the eye on the shoes - but my eye goes straight to the dog! And what a great dog it is! :-)
I don't like letterbox framing! And if you've got to do it, don't beat me over the head with it with such a bold white frame edge!! But I'm setting this aside because this is such a terrific image!!! It fun. It's humorous. It tells a story. Possibly best of show.
I'm torn. I love this picture, but not in this challenge. The shoes and legs are almost completely black, so that the shoes don't stand out at all. So it seems like the picture is of the dog.
In the ring with your pooch. However, it is clear that not the shoes, but poochie is the main subject in this photograph. Although she looks terrific, perfectly groomed and oh so fluffy, the shoes don't succeed in getting the attention you want them to have by entering this photograph.
Nice photo and well timed. At first I didn't think it quite met the challenge as I was focusing on the handler's shoes. But then it occured to me to look at the dog's fury shoes. Good luck.
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