About Embark

In 2024 I chose to participate in the Unleashed Education Embark Challenge to get some feedback on my photography and editing skills. This Challenge is a 6 month Challenge with very set briefs that need to be met with a Top 20 and Top 10. To rank in the Top 20, your photo needs to meet the specific brief, be well edited and be compositionally appropriate. To make the Top 10 you need to do all of this, and add a little something special to make it stand out from the crowd.

The Brief

We want to see some action! Specifically, the dog running directly towards you with plenty of expression and at the optimum position in their stride. The image should be shot from a low angle and the subject should be evenly lit. There should be no motion blur, with sharp focus on the eyes or whole face.

This is the one Challenge that I knew wouldn’t be a problem for me. While the location and overall look would of course need to be worked out, the action of running towards me is something I knew my personal dog would be perfectly happy to repeat however many times I needed to get the shot I wanted.

Across multiple attempts at Front Runner, I ended up choosing a photo I took while enjoying a sunrise walk on a friends rural property. I tried a backlit sunrise Front Runner shot first, but because of the location there wasn’t enough light for it to work. So we swung around so the rising sun was directly behind me to capture this amazing mid-air shot in -1C temperatures.

Editing this photo was such a joy. Not only because it was my personal dog, but also because he’s so happy and the lighting was so soft and gorgeous. There was almost no clean up needed of stray pieces of grass to take away from his flying position, and with the bokeh so soft and creamy in the background all I needed to do was let the light shine through and show it’s beauty.

The Result

I knew I loved this photo, so I was really hoping it’d do well. Since I was at home and desperately waiting for the feedback video to go up, I was able to find out how this photo went from the video before the badges were released. The only bit of feedback to improve this particular photo was to remove some frost (which I’ve already done in the above image) as it wasn’t clear what it was in the moment and therefore the bright spots from the frost drew the eye away from the dog. Overall, their feedback was:

What a dynamic moment really elevated (literally) by the photographer getting down so low to the ground giving the dog extra height in its run! Soft even light on the face allow us to connect to the subject.