Working on Christmas Card

anonymouscuban

Wife and I are going with a dog theme this year on Christmas cards. We have four dogs so it's going to be a challenge getting them all to behave in front of the camera. I decided to take some practice shots with the most well behaved, Addison, our 10-YO yellow lab. Here is my favorite from the set of practice shots.

I'm curious to know how it looks on your side. Specifically, is anything blown out and is the good separation between her and the background? Any artifacts from processing in the background? I'm having issue with my monitors.

Internaut

The eyes are perfect and convey a great deal of emotion. He is missing something though....... Bells perhaps? A hat also? As for whether anything is blown....... It is very bright but I wouldn't want to make a judgement based on my MacBook's poorly calibrated monitor.

BTW, I was only discussing with a friend this evening how Christmas cards lost their meaning when we all started buying mass produced "made in China" cards instead of making our own.

anonymouscuban

Thanks for the feedback. He is a she. Yeah, I totally agree that she needs some holiday props. This was just a practice go just to check lighting and such. I have 3 other dogs which I will ultimately include in the photo with hats and and presents and such. But I wasn't ready to do a full on dress rehearsal... I don't even know if I will be able to get all four to cooperate at once for the picture so I may have to shoot them one at a time and then blend all the shots together in post. We'll see.

BTW, I do agree with your comment regarding the store bought cards. We do our own every year.

Malte

anonymouscuban wrote:

Wife and I are going with a dog theme this year on Christmas cards.

What, no half-nekkid cubans?! D

anonymouscuban wrote:

...is the good separation between her and the background?...

Separation from the white BG is the only weakness i spot. I think this beautiful "yellow" lab is pale enough to represent the white of christmas all on her own, with a different colored BG.

Looking forward to seeing the rest of the pack and the final images!

Malte

Dogdots

I think the red collar is all that is needed for a christmas prop. Simplicity works wonderful in this image.

Beautiful dog....beautiful photo and what beautiful eyes she has

Sorry no help on the background, etc. Looks fine to me since all I see is the dog

VayCayMom

maybe pop the red collar a bit instead of adding props

anonymouscuban

@ Malte...

Thanks. I thinking about trying other BG colors so we'll see which looks best.

@Mary...

She is beautiful, isn't she? That's my girl. What motivated us to go with our pups for the card this year is that 3 weeks ago, we thought we were going to lose 3 of the 4 dogs. Our lab and two of our pugs got into some rat poison in the garage. Ate an entire box. I didn't find out until 12-hours later so inducing vomiting was pointless. The poison they ate is a long acting anticoagulant. Basically, the animal dies of internal bleeding. My wife and I were both so scared. The antidote is Vitamin K, which is needed for clotting. Fortunately we all made it through this ordeal and the are healthy as ever. Really reminded us that how much we love our dogs and how thankful we are to have them as part of our family.

@Trudy....

Yeah... I don't think we are going to use a bunch of props. One idea I have is to place the 3 pugs inside a box wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper. We also bought Santa hats for the pugs and antlers for the lab. Gonna try to get a goofy shot of them in them. We typically send out different cards so not everyone get the same thing.

Dogdots

anonymouscuban wrote: »

@Mary...

She is beautiful, isn't she? That's my girl. What motivated us to go with our pups for the card this year is that 3 weeks ago, we thought we were going to lose 3 of the 4 dogs. Our lab and two of our pugs got into some rat poison in the garage. Ate an entire box. I didn't find out until 12-hours later so inducing vomiting was pointless. The poison they ate is a long acting anticoagulant. Basically, the animal dies of internal bleeding. My wife and I were both so scared. The antidote is Vitamin K, which is needed for clotting. Fortunately we all made it through this ordeal and the are healthy as ever. Really reminded us that how much we love our dogs and how thankful we are to have them as part of our family.

I'm so happy to hear that all your dogs are ok. I know the worry we dog parents can feel when something happens to one of them...to have 3 to worry about .... that's really stressful.

I was going to ask you...how did make her eye color really pop out so beautifully?

anonymouscuban

Dogdots wrote: »

I was going to ask you...how did make her eye color really pop out so beautifully?

Mary,

I did it the same way I do people eyes. I create a Levels Adjustment Layer in CS4. I bumped the highlights and midtones up quite bit. I then invert the mask so everything is unselected. Then I take a very soft brush, set at about 15% opacity, and "paint" the eyes until I get them where I want. This give them a nice bump and makes them pop. I then sharpen the eyes in LR3. You could do the same in LR3 using the Selective Brush tool and auto-mask feature. Just bump the brightness, clarity and saturation using the sliders. I switch off depending on the image and what other stuff I am doing to it. This image, I was already in CS4 cleaning up the background so I did it there.

Hope that helps.

Dogdots

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Mary,

I did it the same way I do people eyes. I create a Levels Adjustment Layer in CS4. I bumped the highlights and midtones up quite bit. I then invert the mask so everything is unselected. Then I take a very soft brush, set at about 15% opacity, and "paint" the eyes until I get them where I want. This give them a nice bump and makes them pop. I then sharpen the eyes in LR3. You could do the same in LR3 using the Selective Brush tool and auto-mask feature. Just bump the brightness, clarity and saturation using the sliders. I switch off depending on the image and what other stuff I am doing to it. This image, I was already in CS4 cleaning up the background so I did it there.

Hope that helps.

Thanks -- helps a lot I'll give it a try.

anonymouscuban

Still not the shot for the Christmas card but thought I'd post this one because she's too cute. I tried to get them all in a picture but it was pure chaos. I will have to try again with the help of my wife.

Dogdots

She is a cutie -- how old?

Would of liked to of seen a video of you getting all the dogs to sit still so you could photograph them together

anonymouscuban

She turned 4 last month. She's the sweetie of the bunch. Her name is Potato. We also have her brother Meatball who is totally in love with Addison the lab. He never leaves her side.

Yeah... They ripped down my background, almost knocked my studio lights over and I could never get more than two of them to sit still at once. I should of known better than to try to do this by myself.

Dogdots

anonymouscuban wrote: »

She turned 4 last month. She's the sweetie of the bunch. Her name is Potato. We also have her brother Meatball who is totally in love with Addison the lab. He never leaves her side.

Yeah... They ripped down my background, almost knocked my studio lights over and I could never get more than two of them to sit still at once. I should of known better than to try to do this by myself.

Love the names you have for your dogs

Sounds like you had an adventure with getting them to sit still Looking forward to seeing the final product.

anonymouscuban

Another one of Potato from yesterday... makes for a nice computer wallpaper:

Dogdots

What a honey Those eyes...they speak to you.

How about Don

Hands down the first for me. That is a super shot and all the nit picking in the world won't make it any better! The dog is the story and she's a bueaty!

anonymouscuban

Thanks Don. As I said, we have 4 pooches and I don't say this out loud in my home but Addison, the lab, is my favorite. I love the pugs but they can't match the bond I have with her. I surf and she used to come surfing with me all the time. Often she would paddle out through the waves and hang with me and my buds out in the line up while we waited for the next set to roll in. She'd paddle from board to board and just hang. She's 10 now so I don't bring out as much with me because I worry that she doesn't have the same stamina as she did. But when the surf is small, ankle-slappers, I take her out and she has a blast.