Have you ever seen those fantastic newborn images of babies in a sling, hanging from a tree, suspended above a lake and thought, "Yikes!" Or, "How did they do that?". Well here's a little peek behind the scenes! No technical photography terms today. No complex concepts. Just 5-day old puppies sleeping in a basket out in a field...or were they?
My good friend, and fantastic newborn photographer, Cyndi Williams Photography was kind enough to show me the ropes of how she creates her nationally recognized images and gave me some tips on how to make my own, only with puppies! I'd like to introduce you to the Gravy's Fixins litter who was featured in another blog post at the age of 6 weeks, because c'mon, if you've got access to puppies, you're going photograph them at every chance you get!
Some of the logistics first; I learned that you need to "shoot for the composite", or the fantasy image (see below). I already had the image of the basket (there are hundreds of these available for sale on the Internet if you ever want to try this yourself) and knew I wanted the puppies lined up in a row and sleeping. I then purchased a similarly colored fleece blanket to pose them on to ease the blending of the two images in post processing (all things I learned from Cyndi). The breeder, Emily Hurt of EmDogs agility in Plano, TX set up a table for me about two feet away from the whelping box (where the mom gives birth to the puppies). Just like human babies, puppies have low immunity when they're born, so every precaution was taken. Only the breeder handled them and we used a brand new fleece blanket for the session. A small space heater kept the room a toasty 80 degrees, so despite the cool temps outside, we were working up a sweat indoors!
The next consideration is to set the lights to best match the lighting pattern of the fantasy image so that when you combine the two, it's believable. In the basket image, the light looks like it's primarily coming from overhead, so I set up my lights and reflectors accordingly. There's quite a shallow depth of field in the basket image as well, so I adjusted my camera settings to match (i.e. the puppies can't be in full focus if the back edge of the basket is a bit out of of focus due to the depth of field chosen for the image (check out this earlier post if you'd like to learn more about depth of field). Ok, we're ready to go. Let the games begin!
We thought that being only 5 days old, this would be a piece of cake, but just to put the odds more in our favor to get compliant puppies, we timed the session for after a feeding so the they would be satiated and more likely to sleep - or so we thought! I did mention that these are border collie puppies right? Well, even at 5 days old, they are BUSY! It took us over 30 minutes, countless reposing and 118 frames to get the ONE image of them all lined up - well mostly, there was one on the end that was going to sleep on his side no matter what! Here's a small sampling of the outtakes.
THE ONE!
A hour or so of Photoshopping later and the fantasy is complete! Not too bad for my first attempt, and I'll take it as a compliment that when Emily shared the image on a social media site, she was chastised for risking her litter's health by taking them out into a field for a picture! Ha! She had to request the "behind the scenes images" from me to post and ensure everyone that no risks were taken! The puppies were never further than two feet away from Mom and the whelping box. Illusion achieved!
As you have probably already guessed, the subject for Week 6 of the Pet Photography 52 Week Project was "fantasy", you'll definitely want to check everyone's work this week starting with Darlene with Pant the Town Pet Photography serving MA and NH and continue clicking on the link at the bottom of each post for an around-the-world fantastical tour of pet photography.
11 Comments
Feb 13, 2018, 12:38:36 PM
Linda Perdue - Wow - thank you for sharing, what a beautiful final photograph. I love that you tell us how many of the shots it took of the little puppies! I have learned that you do have to shoot with intent to do a composite...and that's a whole new world for me too.
Feb 10, 2018, 2:57:48 PM
Nancy - Lovely composite! and great tutorial for those of us not used to doing composites.
Feb 10, 2018, 3:46:13 AM
Lynda - Just gorgeous! Great tutorial too. Well done!
Feb 9, 2018, 8:13:20 PM
Darlene - How sweet! I love this -it's wonderful!
Feb 9, 2018, 4:43:34 PM
Ursula - I absolutely love the outtakes. What a sweet bunch of puppies. A lot of work, but well worth it.
Feb 9, 2018, 3:01:44 PM
Danyel Rogers - Holy cow you should be SUPER happy for your first attempt. Nicely done!
Feb 9, 2018, 2:03:15 PM
Kelly - Love it!!! Great job and great tips for future reference!
Feb 9, 2018, 11:02:24 AM
Rochelle Marshall - Excellent work here!
Feb 9, 2018, 6:24:55 AM
Kim Hollis - Really nice job on your first attempt at doing this!!
Feb 9, 2018, 6:03:52 AM
Linda Metcalf - Oh.my.goodness! Love that you got to work with puppies and I really enjoyed your explanation of how it came to be!
Feb 9, 2018, 4:37:25 AM
Sam Adele - Ooh what a great job!! This is very cute :)