Week 22 - Pet portraits - The 2022 Trevor Carpenter Photo Challenge

This week’s challenge stars our pets and other animals! It’s a pretty straightforward one: shoot an image of your favorite animal looking at us. No other restrictions, both color and black and white are fine. The real challenge is finding a suitable subject and making it face you in some way.

You can try many perspectives. The one I find most difficult, but also most rewarding, is full frontal. Like in this shot of a really cool sheep that I met at a Yorkshire farmer market. I really like its dreadlocks!

My tuxedo cat Pebbles is very good at staring, which makes here a perfect model. In this shot, I erased the background in Snapseed, so that the focus is completely on the eyes.

A perspective that may be a bit easier, is sideways. Here, I asked someone else to distract my cat Bumper so that he was looking up. This left me free to take the actual picture and take care of composition and light.

And remember: you may find your subjects in the most unlikely places! This dragonfly sat still on a pole for more than half an hour. Plenty of time for me to fetch my macro lense, find the best light, get a chair to get even closer and take plenty of shots. I christended him Fritz by the way (as in Fritz-de-vrolijke-zomerlibelle, or Fritz, the happy summer dragonfly).

If you’re brave enough, you can try approaching cattle, like this Scottish highlander (which roams freely in many Dutch woodlands too). Now here’s a dude with attitude!

And remember, it doesn’t have to be serious! Keep your phone ready, in case you find a candid situation, like this one where Bumper photobombed my new shoes:

Or the time when Pebbles wouldn’t let him out into the garden:

Have fun, looking forward to your submissions!

The friendly community guidelines are pretty simple:

Post one original photograph (Your Image) shot each week per theme posted on this blog to our active community on our Facebook Group, Flickr Groupor 500PX group (or all three). Tag the photo: #10thanniversaryphotochallenge #2018photochallenge #photochallenge #tempusaura
The shot should be a new shot you took for the current weekly theme, not something from your back catalog or someone else’s image.
Don’t leave home without your camera. Participating in the 2018 Trevor Carpenter Photo Challenge is fun and easy.

[amazon_link asins=’0240812158,111807775X,1682031721,0470932279,1682032248,1503301087,1681980975,0133953556,1682030962|0240812158,B00ZS4GTIU,B072SMJNRK,0470932279,1682030962,1503301087,1682032248,1681980975,0133953556|0240812158,1503301087,1682032248,0470932279,1681980975,0133953556,1520499884,1682033104,1846149428′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’stevetrolep0f-20|stevetrolepho-20|stevetrolepho-21′ marketplace=’US|CA|UK’ link_id=’7dfc1a6b-60de-11e8-bd1c-8908f7180bb2′]