WE WON!!!

Last month we participated in a photo competition of our local veterinarian. The theme was "people/pet relationship". The winning photo may be used on cards/invites to pet owners to remind them of the yearly vaccinations of their dog or cat. The winner of the competition also gets a price.  

My wife came up with the idea of us and the dog sleeping together in bed. I worked out a plan and thought it might be possible to pull of by making use of a tripod and the remote app on my phone. With te app we could see what the camera was seeing and trigger the camera when ready. We coached our dog into our bed (the sheets needed to be cleaned anyway). But she was very suspicious and a bit nervous as she didn't knew why would want her on the bed (that's normally not allowed), and was probably suspicious, because we wanted her laying in a specific position. Our first plan was to all leigh on our backs. But Nikki didn't want to do that.

​Eventually we had her on the right spot. My wife and I then laid beside her and we pulled the sheet over us and the dog, and once I thought it looked kind of okay, I shot three pictures. Very soon our dog wanted to leave, she had enough. We didn't want to force her to stay, so we had to make do with what we had.

We thought none of the photos was really right, looking at the back of the cam. But once I looked at them in full size on the computer, one seemed to have worked out pretty good. It needed some cropping, the dark pink curtains were distracting, some basic editing (removing chromatic aberrations, a little less clarity and some color correction) and to finish it of a white vignette and it looked pretty good! 

Hereunder you see one of the pictures that was made in preparation of the winning picture, which I find quite funny.

​We send the one good photo to the veterinarian, together with one other photo. The one with our dog Sammy, who passed away last summer. See the other submitted photo below.

Both photos, the one with Eveline and Sammy and the one with Nikki and us in laying bed, were send in separately. Directly after sending in the Nikki picture  we got an email back from the veterinarian with the question "if we really made this picture ourselves". I explained how we shot the picture and assured him we really made it ourselves. He responded by saying, "that is was a pretty good picture".

After a few weeks we got an email saying we won first price and we were invited to pick up our price together with the numbers two and three. There we received a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a large print/canvas of our winning picture. We're very happy and proud to win!  

Picture from: Sterkliniek Dierenkliniek Leusden

On Wednesday December 9th an article was published in our local newspaper (De Leusderkrant) about us winning first price. It was also about how the photo was made and about my wife and I. That we're both very creative people and that we complete each others strengths, as my wife loves to write and often has good/creative ideas and I love to photograph and often get inspired by my wife's ideas. Hereunder you can see the article as it was published. It took up almost half of the page :)

Article from: Leusderkrant
Written and photo taken by: Mariska Stehouwer