Project 52 - Week 18: Framed

I have to admit, when I found out this week's theme, my mind immediately went to the day our cat Matty rolled an egg off the counter onto the floor where it smashed, and Lilah came along and ate it shell and all.  It was Lilah I caught lapping up the last remnants of egg yolk, and Matty no where to be found, but I knew he had framed her.  Matty is the cat that finds where we stash everything and takes great delight in trying to move it to the floor.  He has crashed some eggs into the sink, and others he has rolled to the floor, yet we still haven't learned our lesson.  We continue to bring in our eggs from the hen house and continue to think they are safe where we line them up.  It's like birth.  We have a momentary lapse of "Matty" just like a mother forgets the pain of bearing a child.  Until an egg is on the floor.

Setting that shot up would take several, planned storyboards, and I have had the busiest week of all time, so I opted to do something else.  I had already given a hint on my Facebook page regarding the transformation of a photo I shot of Lilah enjoying the outdoors this past weekend (we FINALLY had wonderful weather....now back in rain season).  I had saved  a backdrop from a previous stint of spending several hours looking through stock photos (sometimes I get really wrapped up in it) that I thought would work well with the Lilah photo, if I merged them into one.  The fact that it was a "frame" of flowers was even better.  Lilah looks good in flowers, and our yard is VERRRRY green, but still kind of blah.

First, as a reminder, here is the photo I took of Lilah enjoying her outside time in our back yard.

And here is the photo of Lilah framed by flowers.  If more of our own flowers were blooming, I might have been able to sit Lilah in a real garden, instead of using a stock photo, but we aren't there yet.  With all the rain we've been having, you would think a forest of flowers would be in bloom by now.

Since I was on a roll with digital manipulation, I decided to use another photo of Lilah taken on the same day, and this time frame her in bubbles.  The bubbles are an overlay.

In looking back through the blog posts I have done over the past two years, there are a number of photos I have taken where pets are framed by natural objects:  Luke looking out a window, Moe posing in a piece of playground equipment, etc.

There are so many ways you can frame your subject in a photo.  It's really all about your eye, your subject, what you have at hand, and what will enhance and make your photo more exciting.  I had a little fun this week using some things that weren't originally in the environment, but my last photo for the week is one of a Setter that was hunting in a large field, and paused for a moment, framed nicely by the brush and grasses.  Mother Nature often gives us some great choices as pet photographers, so whenever possible, I'm all about using her as a prop.

To see more creative framing, you know what to do.  Take a spin around the blog circle.  Start with Cynthia Wood of Pets We Love Photography in Toronto and Collingwood, Ontario.  Enjoy your weekend!