
Final piece submitted to the gallery
Yesterday we blogged about a white German shepherd named Wheels. He visited our studio with his younger “brother” Smoke to participate in a photography project we were doing to benefit the Griffin Pond Animal Shelter in Pennsylvania. The shelter, as with most shelters, was looking for funding and we thought a gallery opening of dog art might be fun. Our friends at Marquis Art and Frame in Scranton were happy to host the opening for us.
The concept was Black and White — not black and white photographs of dogs, but black and white dogs. We put out a call for black dogs, white dogs, and black and white dogs. Wheels and Smoke were the only black and white shepherds in the show.

Single shot of Smoke by himself

Wheels!
Smoke was just a puppy at the time of this session and we didn’t know how cooperative he would be, but he and Wheels were absolutely amazing! We were able to get so many different poses from them that in the end it was hard to decide which image to use. Kudos to their parents for the excellent training!
Please note: some of the images in this post have not been cropped nor retouched. We thought it might be interesting to show you what images really look like straight out of the camera. There’s a lot of mess with pet photography. There’s plenty of paw prints, hair and slobber to clean up!

Off to a good start!

Smoke feeling the need to talk to Wheels.

Wonder what they’re thinking?

Trying something different

And another possibility

Love how Wheels’ jaw fits perfectly between Smoke’s ears!

Can’t expect a puppy to cooperate forever

One tongue in, one tongue out

And yet another option!
Smoke and Wheels were truly amazing dogs. In the end, we decided to go with the image below and make it more of a modern art piece printed on metallic paper. We added the effects you see in the image at the top of the post and submitted that to the gallery.

Final image used in the composite

Final composite sans effects
In the end, we sold several pieces and were able to raise $700 for the shelter. We’ll share more images from this project over the next few weeks. If you’d like to see more images from the black and white project, please go to: A Black Tie Affair
Happy Wednesday! 🙂