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
It’s the very last challenge in the round, so it’s time to par-tay! We want to see your doggy subject at play – either by themselves, perhaps with a toy, or with other dogs. This is an action challenge so we want to see sharply frozen movement and great expression, telling the story of their play time.
I took my photo for Play Time back in May quite unexpectedly. I was doing a shoot with Cowboy for Colourific, and Splash at Brighton Beach when his jumping around for his ball gave me the idea to capture his vertical leap and flip with the cityscape in the background. Even though I played around with some other photos, this one made me stop and just take in the moment every time which told me it was the image I had to use.
Editing this photo was something I did over a series of months. I did the initial edit to give to Teagan and Emerson by early June, but I kept tweaking little bits and pieces until I was absolutely happy. Almost all of my tweaks were tiny adjustments to how the light fell, where shadows fell, and little bits of debris in the sand that I felt detracted in some way from the power of Cowboy’s leap.
The Result
The final challenge is one where I knew I had a great photo, and I was really confident that I’d make it into at leas the Top 20 – but whether it was good enough to achieve a Top 10 result was the question. After watching through the entire feedback video, I got the delight to find out that Cowboy’s leap had made it through to the Top 10 with only one small masking tweak needed. Their feedback for this photo was:
Everything here is reaching for the sky and the dog is placed so well against the background. Almost defiantly pushing it’s paw up off of the building to gain extra height! Simple, with soft light, beautifully composed and filled with joy.