A potential submission for my town's art gallery

[Luca]

So I have returned, thanks to all the love I have gotten on here, I can't thank everyone enough. I didn't realize how big of a part I really do play in this community and it's an honor.

This is a series of photos I took a few weeks ago, of Enzo and his best friend, Rico, who is one of my daycare dogs. Rico is a "pocket" Belgian Malinois (not a "designer" breed, but an intentional crossbreed as a farm work dog. You will see a lot of intentional Malinois crosses for this purpose and for protection work.) You may have seen other pics of Rico on here before, he was originally named Ranger when he was purchased by my friend, who primarily has German Shepherds. He's one of my favorite dogs of all time and that's saying something!

I think I've mentioned before in passing that I belong to a disabled artists' group, and while I'm certainly not a professional photographer by any means, a lot of the group members have taken a liking to my photography. I have received many recommendations to enter my artwork and photographs into my town's art gallery (I visit the gallery all the time, it's in some of my profile posts.)
This photo series is a huge favorite of many people who are familiar with my work, so I'm thinking about applying to submit it to the gallery, which features local artists' work as part of a regular rotation.

I'm not looking particularly for criticism or much feedback overall, considering that I've already gotten a lot of that from other artists (which was very positive, thankfully), but I just wanted to share and hope that this makes someone smile. I thought it was a fun series of pictures of two best friends having a fun day.

 

[Raggamuffin]

In my opinion - I like the second to last most, if you cropped it slightly to lose the blue blur in the bottom left corner.

Ed

 

[Luca]

In my opinion - I like the second to last most, if you cropped it slightly to lose the blue blur in the bottom left corner.

Ed

That one is my favorite too. My eyes are so bad that I barely noticed the blue thing. I'll edit that out

 

[Outdated]

Have these been cropped already or are they showing the full frame? I really like the first two pics but there needs to be a little bit more space between dogs and edge of frame to give the overall image more balance. (zoomed in too close)

Great pictures though.

 

[Luca]

They are cropped, they're screenshots because the full size files are unable to be uploaded on here for some reason (a problem I run into frequently.)

 

[Outdated]

They are cropped, they're screenshots because the full size files are unable to be uploaded on here for some reason (a problem I run into frequently.)

I reckon a slightly wider crop (not too much) of those first two pics would look great.

And a simple trick I use for most pics on here is Scale Image to 25% of original size. Never overwrite your originals though, always work on copies.

 

[Luca]

I reckon a slightly wider crop (not too much) of those first two pics would look great.

And a simple trick I use for most pics on here is Scale Image to 25% of original size. Never overwrite your originals though, always work on copies.

Thanks!
I actually did not know that. That's super useful.

 

[Rodafina]

Good luck in the contest, @Luca!!!

 

[Aspychata]

Nice pictures, l can't critique, l like all of the shots, l also like the last shot. It's interesting seeing their personalities shine as they look at each other.

 

[Luca]

Nice pictures, l can't critique, l like all of the shots, l also like the last shot. It's interesting seeing their personalities shine as they look at each other.

Thanks! They both have a ton of personality

 

[Kisa the tea]

I love how Enzo always looks so happy in pictures. He looks especially so here, being with his friend.

 

[Misery]

I think the 2nd to last one is the best, definitely. It has the most interesting / dynamic angle to it (or whatever, I dont know all these terms).

I'm curious, what do you do for editing and such when you do these?

 

[MildredHubble]

I think all of them are quite wonderful Luca! I'm sure they will look great in an exhibition! Your photos always seem to have so much soul and life

 

[Nitro]

They are cropped, they're screenshots because the full size files are unable to be uploaded on here for some reason (a problem I run into frequently.)

I often alter my oversized images using Microsoft Paint of all things.
Extremely simple where all that is required of you is to call out a simple percentage to get it done.

I keep huge file sized masters, often as high as 10mb and simply edit a copy/pasted one for my resizes.
I generally do either a 50 or 30% reduction which puts the files at a more forum friendly size while retaining the entire image.

 

[Aspychata]

In the last picture, it's obviously Rico saying to Enzo, now l know why my excel worksheet kept crashing, thanks for the explanation.

 

[Luca]

I think the 2nd to last one is the best, definitely. It has the most interesting / dynamic angle to it (or whatever, I dont know all these terms).

I'm curious, what do you do for editing and such when you do these?

I use a free software called Photoscape. I don’t really like a lot of the editing tools on Photoshop so I mostly use it for drawing.

 

[Outdated]

I use a free software called Photoscape. I don’t really like a lot of the editing tools on Photoshop so I mostly use it for drawing.

For quick simple editing have a look at Real Draw.

It's very easy and intuitive to use, created more so for drawing than for serious photo editing and aimed specifically at creating web content.

Real-DRAW, vector-bitmap editor