I’m a member of Unleashed Education, the online mecca for pet photography education developed by Charlotte Reeves and Craig Turner-Bullock. If you’re a photographer and would like to improve your knowledge, I highly recommend this group.

If you’re a client and you’re reading this, I am a member of this group so that I can continue to grow and learn. I always want to improve my photography skills.

I am participating in their third pet photography challenge called Empower.

For the next 6 months, we will be given a topic every 2 weeks and we have to create our vision using a pet and whatever the topic is.

The first challenge for Empower was “Along the Lines.” The challenge is to create an image using leading lines that draw attention to the subject.

I wanted to participate in Empower for many reasons and I posted about this on my Instagram. Here’s the link to the post and a cute photo of my dog Jeff with some subtle leading lines (yet another location and idea I had): Jeff on Instagram. Feel free to give me a follow!

There are certain types of compositional aspects in photography that I love and leading lines are one of them. But in looking back at my own work, I don’t use them very often. And they are everywhere.

I started to do some research on leading lines and I saw this photo by Ritesh Saini. I was immediately drawn to it. I wanted to try and recreate something similar to this with a dog.

My first step was to find a bench so I drove around looking. My next step was to find a dog model. Lastly, I needed to study this photo to try and figure out how he did this. I actually tried to find him to compliment him on this amazing photo and to ask for his help but I wasn’t successful reaching him.

My attempts to recreate this failed too. For lots of reasons but here are some of them:

1. In Ritesh’s photo the bench has slats that are fairly evenly spaced from top to bottom. A bench with more space between the slats won’t have this same look.

2. This bench is long. Like really long. It’s next to impossible to recreate the look of these leading lines with a short bench which is all I could find near me.

3. Figuring out which lens to use, where I should be in relation to the bench and then how to crop it was more than my brain could manage.

4. Using a wide angle lens means there will be lots of other stuff in the back of the photo. In winter in NC, that stuff is usually bare trees that aren’t very attractive.

This hound puppy is Murphy and we met up on a very foggy morning.

After this first session and getting home and assessing my photos, I tried again. I found a bench with more even slats which helped but I still had major issues. Here’s one of the photos from that session with Scarlet.

This bench definitely worked better but it was way too short. The background of the photo doesn’t work either and believe me, we tried putting the dog at the other end and shooting that way and it looked worse.

Let me just mention too, both of these dogs totally rocked this. Thank you Murphy and Scarlet and to their dog moms!

I submitted the following image. The first is my edited version and the 2nd is SOOC with no Lightroom or Photoshop edits. The photo made the short list but didn’t make the Top 10.

Here’s the feedback during the judging: They wanted to see more light on the left side of the dog’s face. As you can see, I did lighten it quite a lot since the light was so flat because of the fog. Charlotte and Craig disagreed about whether or not the leading lines were the strongest technique in the image. I will admit I don’t look at the image and say that it screams leading lines.

Their feedback is invaluable and pretty much reinforced how I felt about the image.

After completing this challenge, I do plan to look for leading lines and using them more in my work. This is yet another benefit of being in this amazing group. I am continually inspired and that is such a great feeling.

Now I will take off my “judging hat” and say, I love this image for several reasons.

• I love it because Murphy is adorable and he exceeded my expectations at the session.

• I have never photographed in fog before and I love the softness the fog created in the image.

• I love the complimentary colors of the dog and the bench. (I’d like to say that was planned but it was total luck!)

• I love that I had an idea and I tried something new. Twice! Even though it didn’t work, trying feels like a big accomplishment and I’ll take that as a win.

If you want to see the Top 10 on the Unleashed Education blog, click here. All I can say is “wow!”

Can you help me with suggestions on how to create my inspirational bench photo? Please share if you do.