week 34: Story of Adoption

This week is a bit photo intensive, but it is a blog about photography after all, so I think its ok :-)

This set has been a work in progress for 2-3 months. That's quite a long time to work on only 5 photos, I hear you say, and its true, but I have learned a lot from it, not the least of which is, getting the right props for your photo is not always as easy as you might think.

The original idea came to me when I was going through a stage where I just wasn't inspire to take photos and none of the sites that has great photos which usually inspire me had any effect on me. This was quite worrying as I've bought a new dslr only a couple of months before. But I came across a flickr group which focuses on story telling through photography, specifically they want stories told in 5 frames and so the challenge began.

I had a ton of soft toys in my house and some of them will probably find their way into my photography at some point, but these 5 puppies were just what was prescribed, now all I needed to do is think of a story that contains 5 puppies. That wasn't all that hard to do either because I am a supporter of animal charities in general (and I would recommend that anyone looking for a new pet adopt from one of the shelters rather than buying from a pet store - its better for the animal and in the long run works out cheaper for you too)

Oh, by now I hope you've worked out what the story is here.... I think the title should give it away, but if not, its all about a puppy (I call all dogs puppies and all cats kittens)  who gets hit by a car, gets rescued and taken to a shelter and then finally gets adopted into a new loving home.

Ok, photo wise I have tried to do as little editing to these as possible.

The first one was probably the most challenging, I bought a toy car from the local pound store, but getting the setup done just the way I wanted took quite a bit of planning. And though the "headlights" (and the numberplate) are edited in, the actual lighting on the puppy and the ground was done in camera with the help of my very patient mom-in-law and a torch.

The second one,which was actually the one I did first, was another one which required quite a lot of retakes and adjustments to get it to look the way I wanted. The window was cut out of a cereal box, but then getting it to stand where I wanted without any supports showing in the photos was my first difficulty. Next I had to get the light at exactly the right place to get the length of "moonlight" to shine in without shining over the to of said cardboard box. I would have liked the window itself not to be quite so on the edge of the photo, but I do like how the negative space focuses the eye on our lonely puppy.

My husband suggested the newspapers for the third and fourth one as being cuttings from a real newspaper, but only selecting the bits with the smallest print so it looks more believe-able, which I think worked quite well. The food bowls was made from the tops of Berrocca tubes (the "food" is the stuff in the top that's supposed to absorb moisture).

The fourth photo is the reason this set took so long, not because it was that difficult, but because I could not find a doll's hand anywhere that I liked and eventually had to wait until I went to visit my folks again to get my Sindy doll from when I was little. Flying all the way from London to South Africa for a prop may seem a bit of overkill, but I promise that was not the only (or indeed the main) reason for my visit.

And the final photo was taken with the use of sosatie (skewer) sticks which I used to put the "ball" in place and have the puppy in the background look like he was landing from a jump. The sticks off course was edited out, but nothing was edited in. I'm a little in two minds about whether the ball is too bright, but since it was that bright when I took the actual photo I decided to leave it as it is.

Whee - very long post this time, next week should be back to only one photo though. I'd love to hear if you thought the set worked and the story came through.