Old Time

Dog Blog Post #505: What fun! Today's Daily Dog Challenge was...

12. Vintage - "Make a vintage style photo of your dog. You can use props, processing or anything else you like to make the photo look vintage."

... and I immediately know what I wanted to feature in it.

(As I own few "vintage" things, the decision was an easy one!)

A bit harder was how I was going to present it. So I spent practically the whole day walking around chanting "vintage, vintage, vintage" and threatening to go to the craft store. But it was cold and gloomy out, and after a busy day of running other errands, I just couldn't get up the oomph in the end.

Sooo... out came the double-high backboard, the chairs to lean it against (so I could move behind it for better control of "gaze", although I ultimately never did), and old-but-sturdy end table, and a stack of fabrics to try to figure out which ones would look best in sepia.

(Drape one, take a picture, turn to sepia in camera, see how it looked. Ugh. Drape another... lather, rinse, repeat)

In the end, I went with the plain white background and a rusty colored fabric to use as "table cloth" since it had nice contrast without being overly dark.

The clock JUST fit on the table, and it's a really nice (really old) clock, and I was quite afraid it would get bumped and hit the floor. Of course, the camera is also really nice, and it was teetering on a tripod about eight feet away from the clock, and I also didn't want it to get bumped and hit the floor.

As I could only be one place at I time, this resulted in (a) me growing a few more gray hairs today and (b) only one dog at a time in the kitchen where I was shooting. I figured the fewer tails and less-than-delicate bodies (that includes mine!) the better.

Gaze was controlled by me standing just off frame on the left, holding the treat ramekin where I wanted Henry to look, while the camera on tripod and timer did its thing.

(Yes, I took the same shots of Zachary, but the autofocus inexplicably decided the background was the point of the picture and Zachary came out seriously south of sharp. Grrrr.)

As for the post-processing, there actually was very little. I turned it sepia, added vignette, and that was it. 

The rose was a whim to brighten things up. Do you think it was a bit much? I'm still not sure.

I was also not sure which picture to choose, as I liked them fairly evenly and hubby and son decisively split on which they liked better. Sometimes I think I spent more time trying to pick a favorite than I spent taking them all!

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