Sunday, November 23, 2008

Making the Best of Good Pet Snapshots

When I get in a new client snapshot the 1st thing I do is look for what is great about that photograph. Above we have Luna, an adorable white Boxer. In Luna's case we have a crisp sharp image with lots of detail. The resolution was decent on the digital image. The eyes are stunning, the pose sweet, all in all this photo ranks as a 10 in my book.

When I start cleaning and optimizing I often start to notice things that can be even more perfect. If you check out the cleaned image below you will notice that the ear on the right seems plastered to the side of her head, while the ear to our left is loose, perky and happy. She is also staring straight forward in a wee bit of a mug-shot style.

In the altered image below you will see that I have loosened up that one ear and loosened up her entire demeanor by slightly rotating her head just a tiny bit.
I am still fine-tuning this project and plan to play more with color and try a wide variety of background options. Miss Luna is another excellent example of how high resolution, well shot photographs make the best pet portraits.

3 comments:

Archie and Melissa said...

hi rebecca!
wow! that head turn and ear fix really made a big difference!
what a great eye and hand you have!
:) melissa

Anonymous said...

Rebecca,

I love what you did with the head tilt and would love to know how you did the ear.

Do you have any recommendations for novice photographers for animal shelters? How they can take better pictures or tips to making dogs or cats look better on-line?

artpaw said...

Hey Melissa ...thanks for dropping by.

Jessica, I used Photoshop and made a copy of the ear, used the warp tool and then erased a little of the inside ear to free it up. I have some photo-tips on my site:
http://www.artpaw.com/phototips2.html