BZ Dogs: Rustic Retrievers

Dog Blog Post #828

Photography Assignment

Looks like the…

Our Daily Challenge - Oct 2, 2012 - "Beginning"…

… of a…

Daily Dog Challenge "337. Rustic"

… cookout.

Duke* had better watch out!

Scavenge Challenge September 2012 - "25. Last month, we delicately applied post-processing to improve our photos. This month, we're going to take that a step further and render an image into an artistic version using a heavier hand. Again, photos should be presented as a diptych, side by side for comparison. The challenge you face here is to create something which is visually appealing to a general audience, NOT a garish, over-the-top alteration. Two options to consider: stylizing (rendering as a painting or sketch) or adding a texture to your original image."

(For diptych, see below)

Ok… fuzzy wording ("heavier hand") has me scratching my head. To much? Not enough?

We'll try THIS picture and see if it flies.

Obviously, the top shot (RAW) needed some serious work, although low exposure has benefits if you know ahead of time you want to add in texture/grain. In addition to fiddling with exposure, I pulled on curves and levels, applied vignette, sharpness (more sharpness, yet more sharpness), plus some lightening (of the side of the pan) and polarizing (of the backdrop to kill some of the sheen that developed when I upped the exposure).

If I had to do it over again, I would have tried a small reflector on the pan or just gone with a higher exposure and hoped I could get enough "grain" using sliders, as the black was pretty much a black hole as taken.

All was done in Aperture 3.

* Duke = the stage name of the Golden Retriever in the Bush's Beans commercials, named after the real Golden Retriever owned by the Bean Bush's family.