The Making of Woof-Mas!

It is almost Thanksgiving!  I love November. ...most times.  I can leave the mud the dogs bring in the house behind!    November also brings the creative ideas for Christmas cards front and center.  Last week I had a Photo Event Session at Happy Paws in Derby, NY.  We had lots of dogs  to photograph!

I thought to show a concept that is hard for people to envision when I say we can do this!  

What is it?  Taking 4 individual images and combine them into ONE.  I know it can be hard to see but it was well worth it this time.

I did have a really hard time that morning.  My back was just killing me so I was very slow at setting up everything I needed to do.  AND being late getting ready meant people arrived before I had the right light I wanted for the sessions.  I wasn't happy with the lighting but it worked with some tweaks.  All of these individual photos are straight from the camera - no enhancements done to them.

My plan was not to take individual photographs and make one photo from them all - but I really did not have a choice.  My table was being very difficult and not holding together.  Each time a second dog would jump up a leg would fall out and sometimes more!  I was so getting frustrated with that table and my first client had 4 dogs!   4 big dogs - so there was no way to get them all together for one picture.  Plan B came into effect...separate photos.

The dog below even had a head swap.  I liked the lying down head and ears better than the sitting pose I needed...so I swapped heads!

First thing I did was I took each dog individually and adjusted them so they looked great.  The background I had also worked on.   The next series of steps where just to take each individual dog and line them up on the background.  Then I added a new head to the large blue merle dog.  Once I had everything aligned and looking good, I started adjusting the single image so it looks like the dogs are apart of the scene.     

​Below is the result!  

The first photo session was so popular we have added a second date - Saturday December 14!
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